Riley-Ave LMP3 debut delayed until May's second ELMS round at Imola
The Riley-Ave LMP3 will miss next month's Silverstone European Le Mans Series opener in favour of a debut at round two at Imola in May with the Murphy Prototypes team
The decision to delay the first race of the Nissan-powered Riley-Ave AR-2s follows Ave Motorsport, which has partnered with Riley Technologies on the project, setting up its own composite facility in the US to build key components of the car.
Ave boss Tony Ave, who will race the AR-2 together with fellow two-time Trans-Am champion Doug Peterson, told Autosport: "We had to ramp up our own composite shop, which combined with the extra time we spent on the design, has delayed us.
"It is a homologated car, so we don't want to fix the spec until we are happy with it.
"We wont test for the first time until the first week of next month over here in the US, so it would be a bit of a risk to take it straight to Silverstone [on April 16]."
Murphy, which is expanding into the P3 category after four years in LMP2 in the ELMS, will instead run a Ginetta-Nissan LMP3 for Ave and Peterson at Silverstone.
The Ginetta, which has been leased from the Bolton University/RLR squad that contested the first two ELMS rounds last season, will also take part in the next week's official series test at Paul Ricard.
Murphy is the only team running a car other than the Ligier JSP3 in the LMP3 class of the ELMS this year.
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