Courtesy American Le MansBraselton, Ga. - A year after achieving landmark victories at Sebring and Le Mans in 2006, Panoz now has its eyes set on the American Le Mans Series GT2 championship with two of the most respected and well-known names in sports car racing.
Panoz, Multimatic and Team PTG will jointly launch a two-car assault on the 2007 class title starting at the American Le Mans Series Winter Test on January 22-24. The competition debut of Panoz Team PTG will be the 55th Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on March 17.
Directing the 2007 effort will be Tom Milner's Team PTG. The organization will take over the day-to-day running of the two-car entry in the American Le Mans Series with Multimatic continuing to provide engineering support from its Toronto base. At Sebring last year, Multimatic and Panoz teamed for the American marque's first GT2 win at America's most famed sports car race. Three months later Panoz was a winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time with Team LNT.
"This is another tremendous step forward for the Panoz Esperante GTLM effort," said Dan Panoz, President of Panoz Auto Development. "The 2006 season was a landmark year with wins at both Sebring and Le Mans, arguably the two biggest events on the sports car calendar. The focus for 2007 continues with making the Panoz brand a top championship contender in the American Le Mans Series' highly competitive GT2 class. Our new relationship with Team PTG and the continuing partnership with Multimatic will help these championship aspirations be realized."
Bill Auberlen and Joey Hand, both PTG veterans, will drive the first of the two Panoz Team PTG entries in 2007. They will joined by Tom Kimber-Smith, winner at Le Mans for Team LNT, at Sebring. Drivers for the second PTG Panoz entry are yet to be determined.
Auberlen is no stranger to the Panoz marque, having driven for Panoz Motor Sports aboard the Esperante GTLM in 2005 and the LMP1 prototype in 2002. The Californian scored the first class win for the Esperante GTLM in 2005 at Road Atlanta.
"The competition in GT2 is becoming extremely fierce and despite the Esperante winning both the Twelve Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2006 we believe the pooling of the resources of PTG, Multimatic and Panoz will provide us with our best chance of success in 2007," Milner said. "Our team is extremely excited at this opportunity and we look forward to challenging strong for the GT2 championship."
PTG will continue its long and successful association with Yokohama and PFC Brakes with the new Panoz program while Elan Power Products will continue to provide horsepower for the campaign. Multimatic's unique DSSV dampers will again be used.
In the past 11 years, Team PTG has won a total of 53 races in both sprint and endurance racing events and has won 14 North American sports car championships including four manufacturer's titles. Team PTG was the first GT champion of the American Le Mans Series in 1999 and has posted five class victories. In the 2006 American Le Mans Series, PTG posted three podiums and finished sixth in the GT2 championship with BMW M3s.
Some of the biggest names in world motorsport have competed for the team including Hans Stuck, Dieter Quester, Al Unser Jr., Bobby Rahal, Arie Luyendyk, Paul Newman and Boris Said.
The Panoz Esperante is a high-performance, handcrafted limited production sports car manufactured in Braselton, GA by Panoz Auto Development Company (PADC).
The racing version of the car, known as the GTLM, has been developed for FIA/ACO GT2 competition by EMT with chassis engineering and manufacturing support from Multimatic. The car is available to customers through EMT and, in addition to the factory American Le Mans Series effort, will again be campaigned by several teams in Europe including Team LNT.
Multimatic has provided extensive support to the Panoz factory program over the past five years, including running the race team from its Toronto base in 2006.
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