After a record-setting 2016 season that saw the team bring home multiple championships in both IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge and PCA competition, Kelly-Moss Road and Race will look to bring that winning tradition to a new category in 2017.
Kelly-Moss Road and Race (KMR) has launched a program for the IMSA Prototype Challenge presented by Mazda, which will open at Sebring International Raceway as part of the traditional Sebring 12 Hour event March 16-18.
The 2017 IMSA Prototype Challenge presented by Mazda championship will see the integration of LMP3 machinery into the category, which will stage double-header race events across seven weekends with each race 45 minutes in length. The season finale will take place at Road Atlanta as part of the IMSA Petit Le Mans race event in October.
The team has selected Colin Thompson to pilot the brand-new LMP3-spec prototype machine in the new venture as the young American driver returns to the Kelly-Moss Road and Race fold, having won championships with KMR in both IMSA and World Challenge competition.
The program has come together with the support of Ignite Payments, Mattoni Water, Brey Krause, Sherwin Williams, Ernst Benz and Edoardo Borrelli.
The team recently traveled to France to be part of the first official test of the Norma M30, which saw Romain Dumas and Colin Thompson both take to the wheel for the initial and only day of shake down and testing before putting the car on a plane to KMR in the US. What they saw impressed them as they committed to the new program.
“There is no doubt many may have questioned my sanity launching a program like this so late and with a car so new with no development time on it,” said team owner Jeff Stone, laughing a bit. “To be honest I probably questioned it myself while still waiting to get a car through customs at the Miami airport, at 8:30 PM, one day before the first Official IMSA test day at Sebring this week!”
The small group present from KMR when the car landed included Jeff Stone, Davy Lemmens, Steven Perodin and Alex Stone. They retrieved the car from the airport, went to a borrowed shop in Miami and worked all through the night, drove to Sebring arriving as the sun was coming up and continued to set up and get going on track.
“Fortunately by the time we arrived at Sebring more of the rock star KMR crew was on the ground including engineer Chiel Bos, lead mechanic David Janquardt and race tech Chris Nott (borrowed form the KMR GT3 Cup program) on the LMP3 car for the test,” said Stone.
The first session on day one at the IMSA test showed a good lap time of Sebring for the new car with KMR.
“I have no doubt we will have many highs and lows throughout the program, but I am very pleased with where we stand at the moment given all the challenges placed in front of us,” Stone said. “The Norma is really an exceptional car—the quality is just incredible and that was very clear at the test. We did a lot of research about the different LMP3 manufacturers and went through our due diligence and testing to make the most informed decision we could. Having the only Norma M30 in the world, we are taking a pretty big risk of course but even though this car is the newest to the market, I believe it will rise to the top quickly and possibly even be an advantage.”
Drafting Thompson into the program was a natural fit as the team looks to take proven talent into this new program, and the young racer is thrilled with the opportunity to return to the team in this new effort. This is all part of Jeff Stone’s path of continuing to develop the young KMR drivers taking them into different phases of their careers and expanding their opportunities for the future.
“The IMSA Prototype Challenge championship is going to be completely transformed this year with the addition of the LMP3 cars, and I cannot wait for the first race in Sebring,” said Thompson. “The Norma is really an incredible car, and for me as a driver I’m very excited to be moving into a machine with this kind of downforce and performance. And to be doing it with Jeff (Stone) and everyone at Kelly-Moss is even better. This is a great group so I’m very happy to be a part of this program with Kelly-Moss.”
KMR will manage the effort in parallel with its existing IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge program, which will feature five entries for the Sebring event weekend.
“We’ve been in every IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge race since the series started, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon!” said Stone with a smile. “I love the IMSA GT3 Cup series and really enjoy seeing its continued growth and evolution. With the Prototype Challenge schedule lining up the way that it does, that will be a big help as we launch this campaign with Colin (Thompson), and we are actively looking to grow this program moving forward and KMR is seeking additional funded drivers and adding more Norma M30s to our stable of competition.”
With a range of LMP3 machines already competing around the globe in Le Mans Cup, European Le Mans, and Asian Le Mans competition, the IMSA Prototype Challenge marks the first high-level LMP3 championship to run in North America, something that Norma was highly focused on.
“Most of all I am proud of the full Norma team that worked so hard in the last months and also happy for our partners who were engaged in that great project from the beginning,” said Norbert Santos, founder of Norma Auto Concept. “When you build a brand new car from scratch, you have to be precautionary and respect the objectives of quality you have set to start with. Yes, we are a little late compared to our initial calendar, but we did respect our ambitious objectives. Romain Dumas completed the first test sessions, and it clearly looks like we are on the right path to obtain competitiveness and consistency, thus matching our goals, in the very near future.”
“These tests were great and very positive, I can’t say any other way,” said Dumas after the Norma test. “The car’s reliability is just exemplary and impressive. We ran without any stops in order to find possible youthful mistakes. In addition, even if I knew the full project and the ambitions of Norma, I was really impressed and surprised to see the high quality finish of the car.”
The Sebring 12 Hour race weekend will kick off with a promoter test day on Wednesday, March 15, with the Prototype Challenge races set for 4:25 PM ET Thursday and 5:35 PM ET Friday. Follow IMSA.tv to watch live streaming of the races.
