Ahead Of Imola

Lotus Jetalliance at the 6h of Imola: "We want to follow up on the success of Le Mans and score points again!"

ILMC, fourth race at the weekend in Italy

The team from Lower Austria will again enter both Lotus Evora GTE

The venerable Autodromo "Enzo e Dino Ferrari" is the venue for the "6 Hours of Imola" at the weekend – at the same time the fourth race of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. Also competing will be Lotus Jetalliance – the team from Lower Austria will enter two Lotus Evora GTE.

According to team manager Jan Kalmar things should go similarly well as the last time out at the classic event in Le Mans, where as reported the new Lotus completed the 24 hours in its very first outing and where the team took a podium finish in the ILMC classification on top of that . . .

Jan Kalmar: "We brought one Evora home at Le Mans, in Imola I want to see both cross the finishing line."

But it will be hard enough to fulfil this ambition. Both Lotus have been revised and completely reassembled after the classic race, but owing to the short period of time between the two races the team still has to manage on the same stage of development in Italy. The new updates with regard to performance will only be ready for the next round in Silverstone.

Kalmar: "We learned a lot in France, especially as regards durability – and I place my bet exactly on this fact in Imola. There the drivers can push the limits of the car's performance – which we didn't do yet at Le Mans because of the length of the race. We still have a lot of potential left."

There is not much change regarding the driver line-up: One Evora GTE will be driven by the recently successful triumvirate of James Rossiter, Johnny Mowlem (both GBR) and Jonathan Hirschi (SUI), but this time team owner Lukas Lichtner-Hoyer will also have a seat in the other car besides Martin Rich (GBR) and Oskar Slingerland (NED): "I'm very much looking forward to my participation, and at the same time I hope that the entire team will sell itself similarly well in Italy as it did the last time out at Le Mans. We're still entirely in a development stage with this project, during which any success can't be rated high enough."