The new faces among Le Mans’ oldest class

With the Hypercar category continuing to attract exciting fresh entries in its fourth year and the new LMGT3 class sparking plenty of interest, LMP2 is very much the old stager among the Le Mans 24 Hours’ current divisions. After all, the present generation of machinery was first introduced in 2017.

But, while the class may be a little longer in the tooth than the others – and has dropped out of the World Endurance Championship for this year – there are still scores of Circuit de la Sarthe rookies that have been attracted to LMP2’s ranks for 2024.

One of those is IndyCar racer Kyffin Simpson. The 19-year-old Caymanian finished 21st on his Indianapolis 500 bow last month with Chip Ganassi Racing, and even led for a couple of laps. But he had his first bite of sportscar action last year with a title-winning European Le Mans Series campaign as part of Algarve Pro Racing’s entry.

Now he is adding to an already very busy schedule – that has also featured an IMSA SportsCar Championship outing for DragonSpeed – by joining Fabio Scherer and David Heinemeier Hansson in Nielsen’s Le Mans line-up.

“It was supposed to be like my one weekend off in a very long period of racing, but to go to Le Mans, it's worth it!” he laughs. “I would always love to win Le Mans, that's a goal of mine for my career.”

However, Simpson’s preparations for his first Le Mans attack are not exactly ideal. With his focus very much on IndyCar – he finished 10th in its Indy NXT feeder series in 2023, having originally made his racing debut three years beforehand – he will be at Road America this weekend for the latest round instead of taking part in the official Le Mans Test Day.

Simpson's IndyCar commitments will keep him out of the test day

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt

“I think it will be a pretty big disadvantage considering I will be missing out on some valuable track time,” he concedes. “But I will still have other practice sessions to get up to speed and I'm not too worried because, I mean, we'll have 24 hours of racing to get up to speed!”

Fortunately – and perhaps somewhat surprisingly – Simpson says switching between the seemingly very different Dallara IndyCar single-seater and the ORECA LMP2 challenger is not as tricky as you would expect.

“I don't find it too difficult, luckily,” he states. “I feel like the LMP2 car and the IndyCar are kind of similar in a lot of ways. How they feel to drive is very similar to me and they both have carbon brakes, so it's not like switching brake packages as well.

"Being in the middle class, you'll have people passing you but you'll also have to be passing a lot, so just figuring out how all that traffic flows will be very important"
Kyffin Simpson

“The biggest challenge is probably just getting accustomed to the size and remembering where the edge of the car is at all times. Obviously, you sit on the left side of the car in the LMP2, whereas the IndyCar you're sat right in the middle, so it's just remembering all that and being accustomed to being a little bit further to the left.”

While that is not a challenge fellow Le Mans rookie Alex Quinn faces, the former British Formula 4 frontrunner – who played a key part in PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports winning the IMSA LMP2 title last year – does still have some adapting to do. At a recent Paul Ricard test with TF Sport he found out the true impact of restricting the Gibson motor by 40bhp and the car becoming 20kg heavier for the category’s Le Mans specification.

“It was a bit of a shock at the test when we had to go to the Le Mans [spec] and lower power,” says the 23-year-old, who got the TF drive courtesy of the squad’s AO Racing partnership, having shared PJ Hyett’s Daytona 24 Hours LMP2 entry this year. “It felt like a completely different car.”

Quinn therefore believes the Wednesday practice will be crucial in fully acclimatising to his tweaked machinery.

“I think the key is going to be the first couple of practice sessions, getting out and up to speed as quick as I can without any mistakes,” says Quinn, who works on his family’s Cornish farm when not racing.

It won't be hard to spot Quinn's TF-run AO car with its distinctive livery at Le Mans - although he wasn't originally due to race its car

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images

Yet the TF ORECA is not the car that Quinn originally expected to be racing this year. He had agreed a deal to drive for United Autosports alongside Ben Keating in IMSA for 2024 when he was unexpectedly upgraded from a silver driver to a gold over the winter.

Quinn describes that as being “a bit stressful at the time because we had everything sorted”. Fortunately, he was able to find an alternative ride at Algarve Pro in the ELMS and currently sits sixth in the Pro-Am standings.

But that unforeseen shift of plan means Quinn is now partnered by Louis Deletraz for his Le Mans debut. The Swiss came within a lap of class victory in 2021 before throttle sensor failure robbed him and the WRT squad in the cruellest manner possible, and he has since twice finished runner-up. Quinn is understandably determined to take advantage of that experience.

“There’s a lot to learn and I’m in a fortunate position I’ve got Louis as a team-mate and he’s a very quick driver,” says Quinn. “In terms of my preparation, it’s very helpful having Louis as a team-mate and he’s giving me the things I need to learn, like the silly things like the slow zones and how to manage your time during the race weekend because it’s so busy.”

Simpson is also in the position of having team-mates with excellent Le Mans pedigree alongside him at Nielsen. Scherer triumphed last year, after all, in very dramatic circumstances, having had his foot run over by a Corvette in the pits in the early stages.

“I think I'm going to have to lean on their experience a lot to get myself up to speed,” says Simpson. “As soon as I get there, I'm going to jump right into all the videos and data and everything they've learned over the previous weekend to try to get myself up to speed with where they are. I think having them and all their experience [Heinemeier Hansson has tackled LMP2 at Le Mans on eight previous occasions] will help me a lot.”

Quinn believes Deletraz's experience of Le Mans will be invaluable in short-cutting his learning curve

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

He believes mastering the intricacies of the 8.5-mile track is likely to pose the sternest test for his debut outing.

“It's such a long track, there's so many sections and difficult sections to figure out and just figuring out how the traffic flows there as well is going to be interesting,” he predicts. “Being in the middle class, you'll have people passing you but you'll also have to be passing a lot, so just figuring out how all that traffic flows will be very important.”

Simpson therefore says learning how to deal with the inevitable traffic is just one of the many useful lessons that can be drawn from practice on the simulator, something that Quinn also cites as being an incredibly important tool.

Ultimately, both of them have already demonstrated they know what it takes to win in LMP2 and are now keen to prove they can overcome their lack of Le Mans experience and show how the old class has plenty of exciting new talent in its ranks.

Simpson is the reigning ELMS champion, but knows Le Mans will be a new challenge

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images