European Le Mans Series - History

History

With the allowing Don Panoz to bring the rules and racing formulas of the 24 Hours of Le Mans to North America with the creation of the Petit Le Mans in 1998, Don Panoz attempted to build up a series to be based around Petit Le Mans. The aged IMSA GT Championship was taken over and became the new American Le Mans Series, and met with much success in 1999.

Europe had lacked a major sports prototype series since the demise of the World Sportscar Championship in 1992. Following the success of the ALMS, Panoz attempting to bring sports prototype racing back to Europe. This led to the 2000 American Le Mans Series season, which included two races in Europe as the Nürburgring and Silverstone Circuit, as well as a round in Australia. These races would serve as a precursor to what would become the separate European Le Mans Series in 2001.

The European Le Mans Series was launched for 2001 with five races, including a premier 1000 km race at Estoril, which would be the European equivalent of the 1000 mile Petit Le Mans and earn automatic entries to the 24 Hours of Le Mans for each class winner.

To aid in the development of the ELMS, the 2001 season shared some races between both ALMS and ELMS. The 12 Hours of Sebring and Petit Le Mans, normally ALMS races, were considered optional races for ELMS teams. At the same time, the ELMS races at Donington Park and Jarama were considered optional for ALMS teams. This allowed for the possibility of boosting the draw from international teams to either series.

The series was unable to earn much attention from European sportscar teams, especially since the final FIA Sportscar Championship and FIA GT Championship series used similar cars, but different rules which would require teams to modify their cars or buy new cars to comply with ELMS rules. For the ELMS events that included ALMS teams, very few teams actually bothered to make the trip across the Atlantic to participate in races that appeared to have very few serious competitors. Thus the entry lists for each race fell from 25 at the beginning of the season to a mere 14 at season's end, with some classes only having one or two competitors.

With a lack of involvement from teams, and less interest from the media due to the lack of teams, the European Le Mans Series folded following the 2001 season.

The ACO was not completely satisfied with the fact that IMSA did not fully comply with the ACO's regulations in order to help attract privateer teams, as well as the failure of the FIA Sportscar Championship to succeed in Europe. Seeing the success of the American Le Mans Series, the ACO decided that a series run by themselves would be a better alternative for Europe. The ACO would instead attempt to attract factory backed teams with longer endurance races than ALMS and FIA SCC ran. The series would also be European based instead of international, thus it could be closer to the factories of a large number of sportscar teams to help attract them to the series.

In 2003, the ACO announced their intentions to create their own European-based series, named the Le Mans Endurance Series, which would be similar to the original European Le Mans Series, but feature only 1000 km races instead of the shorter, 2 hour 45 minute races used by the ELMS, and less races in a season than the ALMS and FIA SCC to help keep costs down. Winners of the LMES championship would go on to earn automatic entries in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, similar to the American Le Mans Series.

The series was initially previewed in an open race run under the LMES banner in 2003 at the 1000km of Le Mans, a one-off event before the season started in 2004.

For the 2004 Le Mans Series season, the series participated in four events, including resurrecting classic races like the 1000km Monza, 1000km Nürburgring, 1000 km Silverstone and the Spa 1000 km. A large number of competitors turned out, making the racing very exciting.

2005 saw the series expand to a five race format with the addition of the Istanbul Racing Circuit. In 2007, the LMS held its first and single overseas race with Mil Milhas Brasil as the sixth round.