Michael Shank Racing to switch to LMP2 machinery for 2015 USC

MSR, which won the Daytona 24 Hours in 2012, will field the Ligier JSP2 built by French constructor Onroak Automotive in next season's USC in place of the Riley-Ford EcoBoost DP it ran this year, starting at round two at Sebring in March.

The car will be raced in the full USC by MSR regulars Oswaldo Negri Jr and John Pew.

Shank said that he was making the change for multiple reasons, including a desire a prepare for 2017 when new rules for the USC Prototype class are due to come into force.

"We are going towards what will be happening in the future: the direction we are heading is a P2 car, or some version of that," he told AUTOSPORT.

"But we were also looking for a new challenge after 11 seasons running DPs and one of my drivers expressed an interest in racing a P2."

Shank said he believed the balance between the upgraded DPs and P2s was now "there or thereabouts" after a Honda-engined Ligier run by the factory OAK team finished second at the penultimate USC round at Austin in September.

He would not be drawn on which engine the car would run and whether he would continue his relationship with Ford and use the 3.2-litre P2 version of the Roush Yates V6 twin-turbo that powered his Riley (pictured below) last season.

"There is nothing announced on that and I can't comment further," he said.

It is unclear whether MSR has any plans to swap engines, but it is known that Onroak is working on a Ford installation for a car that has so far raced with Nissan V8 and Honda V6 power.

Shank stressed that the reason he would run a Riley DP at Daytona in January was purely down to the delivery date of his new chassis.

"Don't read anything into that: Onroak is a small manufacturer and Tracy Krohn [whose deal to buy a Ligier was announced in September] is ahead of us in line," he explained.

"Our car won't be ready in time for Daytona and we don't expect to start testing until February."

Shank said that the Daytona line-up would "look familiar", which suggests that Justin Wilson and AJ Allmendinger will returning to the team to share with Negri and Pew.

AUTOSPORT SAYS
Gary Watkings, sportscar correspondent (@gazzasportscars)

A stalwart of the DP ranks switching to a P2 is a significant move: Shank might talk about preparing for the future, but the team wouldn't be making the jump unless it believed the Ligier could be competitive next season.

Shank's purchase of a Ligier goes a long way to legitimising USC rules boss Scot Elkins' claims that the balance between two very different types of racing machine is now as spot on as it is ever going to be.

This is positive news for the USC in general and the Prototype class in particular.