Rebellion to Skip Watkins Glen

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Rebellion Racing will skip next month’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen due to post-Le Mans logistics, the Anglo-Swiss squad has revealed.

Team manager Bart Hayden confirmed to Sportscar365 that the team will not take part in the third round of the Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup as originally planned, due to a later-than-expected delivery of its third Oreca 07 Gibson LMP2 car.

Rebellion’s two season-long FIA World Endurance Championship entries will be taking part in the French endurance classic next weekend, leaving little turnaround time to prepare for a trip to New York.

“The main reason was because of too little time to turn the car and equipment around after the Le Mans 24 Hour race event,” Hayden told Sportscar365.

“We were later in receiving our third car than we had originally [predicted], so we had too much to do in too short a space of time to make it to the Watkins Glen event.”

The team, which scored pole for the Twelve Hours of Sebring with Neel Jani, plans to return for the season-ending Petit Le Mans, although Hayden said no other IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship races are in the cards at this point.

Hayden stressed that its decision to forgo the Watkins Glen round has nothing to do with the streak of success of the Cadillac DPi-V.R, which has won all five races to date with brothers Ricky and Jordan Taylor.

“At Sebring we were close on pace to the Cadillac DPi, we set the pole position lap time after all, but our car wasn’t reliable in the race, so we couldn’t sustain our challenge for the win,” he said

“Looking at the race data, I think the Cadillacs still had the edge at Sebring, but since then they have been pegged back further, so it would be interesting to see where our Oreca 07 LMP2 car compares now.”

Hayden said he expects their Sebring driver lineup of Jani, Sebastien Buemi and Nick Heidfeld to return for the ten-hour enduro at Road Atlanta.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John