RYAN LEWIS RETURNS TO AMERICA

TEAMS UP WITH FELLOW BRITON, LUKE HINES

Ryan Lewis returns to the American Le Mans Series next week when he arrives at Road Atlanta for ‘Petit Le Mans', one of the top sportscar races in the United States.  The 1,000mile/10 hour race is a true endurance classic and, after racing at the Silverstone 1000kms recently, Ryan is relishing the opportunity get back to the States to race a new car against some of the world's top teams and drivers at an event that pulls in many big names.

“It's going to be good catching up with all the Intersport guys after a long break,” said Ryan. “Everyone seems really pumped about the new car, which is a more updated Lola than the one we had before. It was campaigned in the Le Mans Series last year by Charouz and we have all the tricky aero updates and a new engine supplier in Judd. The Creation I raced at Silverstone had a similar V10 engine from AIM, so I've had a bit of experience in the difference between the turbo and naturally-aspirated engines. Overall I think it will be a little quicker package than the previous car.”

“Driving with Creation at Silverstone gave me the opportunity to learn some more about sportscar racing,” he continued. “The Creation team were fighting for the petrol championship and were pushing for a big finish for the end of the year. It was certainly a more intense environment than I have been used to in the ALMS, but that is the difference between racing Stateside and racing in Europe. The American atmosphere is much more relaxed. It's easy to lose focus sometimes when you know that regardless of your efforts you will struggle to get within a few seconds of the car on pole, so it was cool jumping in with Creation and having the opportunity to mix it up with the much larger prototype grid. Me and the Intersport guys still go out there 100% every weekend and try to shrink that gap and now, with the newer car, I think Petit is going to be our best run yet.”

It's a good job Ryan enjoyed racing with a much bigger prototype grid as that is exactly what he has to deal with at Petit Le Mans.

“Things will certainly be interesting at Petit with the influx of cars from Europe,” he said. “I saw first hand the pace of the Peugeot at Silverstone and after losing out on the LMS title to Audi again they will be out for victory. It's going to be good with more prototypes out there, giving us some more cars to fight with. We always struggle with qualifying pace, but our race pace in comparison to the rest of the grid is always good, sometimes giving us the opportunity to fight with the P2 guys. With it being a ten hour race as long as we can stay out of trouble and be quick when we need to be I think we've got the opportunity to turn some heads at Petit.”

The Petit Le Mans starts at 1115hrs (local time) on Saturday 4 October.

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Ryan will have a new team-mate at Petit Le Mans as John Faulkner has elected not to race. He will be joined by friend and fellow Briton, Luke Hines, who has most recently been racing in the British GT and FIA GT Championships. Luke will join Ryan this weekend at Road Atlanta as the Intersport team takes part in the pre-event test sessions.

ENDS

For further information on Ryan Lewis please contact Lindsay Morle on M. +44 (0) 7971 481078 or E. lindsay@morle.com