March was an eventful month for those in the Endurance Brasil grid, but in between tests, announcements and some other details, the championship had things to confirm too.
-The return of a title sponsor
Cerveja Império became the title sponsor of Endurance Brasil, with the competition adopting the name of Império Endurance Brasil after going through the 2018 season without it. It isn’t the first time though, as in 2017 the series was known as Dopamina Endurance due to the link with the Brazilian energy drink company.
-About class changes
Considering the performance differences seen last year, the class system suffered some changes for 2019. Basically older cars were moved to their own classes, leaving the new machinery on top, though this brings the class number to an impressive seven.
P1 is now with the MetalMoro AJR and other international prototypes with the Chevrolet LS3 engine, with the older P1s are now the P2 class, which turned the so-called P2 and P3 classes into P3 and P4. The GT3 class is now formed by post-2012 machinery only, while the older cars are now part of the GT3-Light class.
-Tests and more tests
The teams took the most out of their testing time to work on various things, from mere shakedowns to data gathering. Team Ginetta Brasil and Scuderia 111 were on the shakedown side, with the pair of Ginetta G57 and the two Mercedes AMG GT4 arriving in Brazil only two weeks ago, while JLM Racing and MC Tubarão made the trip to Tarumã to give some seat time to the new drivers and know more about the cars. The Sigma P1, which won’t be at Curitiba, and the Absoluta Racing GeeBee R1 were also being tested to exhaustion recently in order to fine tune them for the 2019 season.
-Late additions to the grid
This isn’t really the norm in Endurance Brasil, but some teams work on deals until the eleventh hour, though most of the lineups were known with some weeks of advance. As an example, GT4 European Series and Silver-rated driver Luiz Floss will do some prototype racing as he will be part of JLM Racing, sharing one of MetalMoro AJRs with a returning Marcello Sant’Anna and Henrique Assunção.
Another late deal is the change from a MetalMoro MRX to a MetalMoro AJR by Kia Power Imports, though the car won’t be ready to go at Curitiba, so Alexandre Finardi will race with JLM Racing, while the expectation is that the new Car 80 will race from Goiânia onwards.
-The Thursday at Curitiba and what comes after
The cars arrived on Wednesday night at the circuit, with the track being opened to practice Thursday, with preparation of the cars in mind, with the No. 65 NC Racing keeping its fast pace and leading the table with a time of 1:13.069, more than a second best than the No. 20 Ginetta G57, while the No. 9 Scuderia 111 Mercedes coming in third overall and on top of the GT3 class.
This Friday (29) there are the Free Practice sessions and qualifying comes in the middle of the afternoon. The start of the 4 Hours of Curitiba will be on Saturday (30) at 2 P.M. local time, with live stream showing the action on Facebook and YouTube.
IMAGES: Endurance Brasil, Team Ginetta Brasil
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