Endurance racing veteran team Pegasus Racing will make its debut in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series in 2018, fielding two cars and electing the official European NASCAR series as their main goal for the season.
A winner of the 2011 Formula Le Mans championship, multiple-time winner of the VdeV prototype championship and a veteran competitor in the European Le Mans Series and the Le Mans 24 Hours, the French team will field two cars in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series starting from the season opener at Valencia, Spain on April 14-15.
“We are looking at the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series since 3 years and we are finally going to be on the starting grid! I tested the car at Fontenay Le Comte and it was a great experience. It’s an awesome car,” said Pegasus Racing co-founder and team manager Julie Schell, who held the steering wheel in many of the team’s greatest successes. “NWES is a top-level championship and we love the series’ approach to racing and the great show it puts up around the track everywhere in Europe. We’ll keep racing in endurance, but NWES will be our main goal.”
Pegasus Racing will undergo an intensive testing program to climb the learning curve as soon as possible and be immediately competitive when they hit the track for the first practice session in Valencia.
“We already planned a test for the end of January when we’ll receive the first car and we are working on a second one in February, possibly at Valencia. We would like to visit all the tracks of the championship to gain the most experience we can,” continued Schell. “We have plenty of work ahead of us, especially since we are going back to sprint racing after years of endurance racing, but we are eager to get going. The competition is at a very high level and with everybody having the same car, you really have to find the little details to gain that last tenth of a second.”
Pegasus Racing was founded in 1998 by Claude and Julien Schell and successfully competed in Formula Ford, winning the German championship in 2001 and the French championship in 2002. In 2005 they entered for the first time endurance racing in VdeV, while in 2009 they ran for the first time in the European Le Mans Series, winning the Formula Le Mans category in 2011. 2010 was the year they made the first of their four appearances at the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours, while they made their WEC debut in 2015.
More details about Pegasus Racing’s lineup and partnerships will be unveiled in the upcoming weeks.
