The ex-F1 star seeking "a nice revenge" at Le Mans

Jean-Eric Vergne had just one black cloud hanging over a 2018 season in which he claimed the Formula E title with Techeetah's customer Renault package, helped G-Drive Racing to seal the European Le Mans Series title with three wins on the trot, and was rated the third best driver of the year in Autosport's Top 50 rankings. As a bonus, he had also contributed to G-Drive's victory in a cameo appearance against the World Endurance Championship regulars at Spa.

The disappointment came at the Le Mans 24 Hours where, after leading from the very first pitstop until the drop of the chequered flag, the ORECA-Gibson 07 he shared with Roman Rusinov and Andrea Pizzitola was booted out of the results for using a non-compliant fuel rig, which had been worth 242 seconds - just over a lap - in refuelling time across the whole event. That the team, run by Xavier Combet's TDS Racing operation, hadn't really needed the doctored dead man's valve to take victory in a race they had 'won' by over two laps - with faultless reliability and no mistakes from the crew - is inconsequential.

Vergne, who views LMP2 as an important springboard in the absence of a viable winning seat in LMP1, has kept faith with G-Drive.

"You cannot leave a team because they make a mistake, because the driver also makes mistakes," he says. "I hope that when I make a mistake the team don't fire me straight away".

The former Toro Rosso Formula 1 driver is seeking "a nice revenge" on his third crack at Le Mans: "It's unfinished business because winning and then being disqualified was not something we wanted," he says with an element of understatement.

"Definitely this year we go back and try and win it for more than 24 hours this time."

As ELMS championship leader, there's no reason to expect that G-Drive - still running an ORECA, but rebadged 'Aurus 01' in deference to its Russian luxury-car-manufacturer backer - won't be a factor. As the 2018-19 WEC superseason reaches its climax with a second visit to Le Mans, the ELMS teams will hope to take advantage of WEC squads prioritising the championship.

The most significant changes in LMP2 ahead of Le Mans 2019 concern the tyres

That logic may make sense on paper, but Jackie Chan DC Racing boss Sam Hignett, whose lead #38 ORECA is four points behind points leader Signatech-Alpine heading into Le Mans, is determined that the ELMS cars won't have it all their own way. He says winning the championship with a conservative run "wouldn't be particularly satisfying".

"We're very aware of the quick ELMS cars and we want to beat them," explains Hignett. "Winning Le Mans is more important than winning the championship - in the situation we're in, they go hand in hand."

In the third year of the current LMP2 rules package, all teams have now reached a point of familiarity with their cars that has been underscored this term by an unusual degree of continuity on the driver front.

The most significant changes are in tyres - Signatech Alpine and ELMS frontrunner United Autosports have switched to Michelin since last year's Le Mans 24 Hours, while the Dunlop teams, including G-Drive and Jackie Chan DC Racing, will benefit from a new C-spec tyre, first introduced at Sebring, which the manufacturer says is designed to offer "improved feel at the rear and enhanced front-end controllability".

"It's nice to go back to Le Mans with the same driver line-up and for it not to be the second or third race of the season as it so often was," adds Hignett. "I think for that reason the level in LMP2 is going to be higher this year than ever before."

But it's not only teams contesting the superseason that are set to benefit. IDEC Sport was the surprise package of Le Mans last season, taking pole in LMP2 and cycling through the lead during the pitstop phases until a gearbox casing cracked.

Patrice Lafargue's team had typically been backmarker fodder in the ELMS, and its upturn in competitiveness last year owed much to the signing of ex-Peugeot LMP1 star Nicolas Minassian from DragonSpeed, where he had orchestrated the 2017 ELMS title for Memo Rojas and Leo Roussel. Rojas moved to join Minassian at IDEC and was joined by '14 ELMS champion Paul-Loup Chatin alongside Lafargue's son Paul, who works in the family real estate development firm.

In his role as sporting director, Minassian took charge of recruitment and has transformed the team "from an enjoyable family-run team to something a bit more professional". Last year he brought in veteran engineer Dave Benbow - a winner at Le Mans with Jaguar in 1988 - and this term has assigned Frederic Ducastel to run the workshop full-time in Minassian's place.

"This year we had much more time over the winter to structure ourselves better, so the team is a little bit less in a rush," says Minassian. "This year it's gone even stronger now structure-wise. There was a good core in the team already - it just needed to have good direction to have the right people in the right place."

The team finished second in the opening round of the ELMS at Paul Ricard and repeated the feat at Monza, despite having its qualifying times deleted and having to start last, with Lafargue Jr more than playing his part.

"Paul as a Silver has just blown everybody away," says Minassian. "He's a proper Silver driver, not like the kind of Silver who stays Silver for a year. He has a proper job - racing is his hobby.

"He didn't test on the Wednesday [before Monza] like everybody does - he was working so he arrived at the last minute on Thursday evening, jumped in the car and - bang! - he does two and a half stints and brings the car from last to P4."

Leading Ligier team United Autosports is also benefiting from stability in its driver line-up, with Filipe Albuquerque returning alongside Asian Le Mans Series champions Paul di Resta and Phil Hanson.

Last year, the crew recovered from losing seven minutes early on fixing an FIA standard-issue GPS tracker to threaten the podium places until di Resta's Sunday morning crash at the Porsche Curves. The performance demonstrated that the parity between ORECA and Ligier was much closer than it had been in 2017.

In the interests of furthering Hanson's development prior to the 19-year-old's entry into the WEC with United next season, the team has pursued a two-driver strategy rarely seen in the ELMS due to the restrictions it places on strategy. Drive-time limitations on Platinum racers meant Hanson had to complete five consecutive stints at Monza, but team boss Richard Dean believes that the approach has succeeded in its core aim.

"We need to attack Le Mans with a lot of humility - there is a long list of things that can go wrong in this race" Jean-Eric Vergne

Hanson beat Pizzitola and three-time Sebring 12 Hours winner Pipo Derani to his first career pole in the Asian Le Mans Series round at Fuji last December in a performance Dean called "exceptional", and with so much track time now under his belt he will be well-placed to take advantage of United's Michelins.

In fact, it was the strong performance at Le Mans last year of Panis Barthez Competition's Michelin-shod Ligier that prompted United's switch, and this yielded back-to-back end-of-season ELMS victories for Hanson and Albuquerque at Spa and the Algarve Circuit.

"He is getting stronger and stronger and we go into Le Mans now without some of the obstacles that we have in ELMS only running two drivers - we're suddenly wide open again," says Dean.

"We can play that how we want now at Le Mans, and we've got a quality driver now in Phil who has proven that he can win races, he's quick over one lap and we can take the pressure off him where he's not having to be in a car for five straight stints."

G-Drive has been forced into a minor change to its driver line-up, with Pizzitola's promotion to Gold status meaning the team requires a new Silver. Dutchman Job van Uitert, reigning ELMS LMP3 champion and runner-up to Marcus Armstrong in the 2017 Italian F4 championship, fits the bill, and he claimed fastest lap on his way to a first ELMS win at Monza alongside Rusinov and Norman Nato (in for Vergne while he was on FE duty in Monaco).

Vergne finished second with van Uitert in last month's Spa WEC round and says the 20-year-old, who skipped karting and only started racing in the Dutch Mazda MX-5 Cup in 2014, is "super-talented" but is keen to brush off any suggestion that G-Drive is the favourite.

"At Le Mans you need to stay extremely humble, just focus on yourself, not the others," he says. "We need to attack Le Mans with a lot of humility - there is a long list of things that can go wrong in this race."

And if anything does go wrong, there will be plenty of teams waiting to pick up the pieces.

"There are so many teams you cannot disregard," adds Dean. "It'll be exciting."