Salo to race LMP2 car at Le Mans

Former grand prix racer Mika Salo will drive a prototype in the Le Mans 24 Hours for the first time since 2003. The Finn, who is contesting selected GT races with SMP Racing this season, will move over to the Russian entrant's AF Corse-run LMP2 squad for the 24 Hours on June 14/15.

Salo, whose only previous LMP appearance at Le Mans came at the wheel of an Arena-run Audi R8 in 2003, will share the team's No. 27 ORECA-Nissan 03 with Sergey Zlobin and Anton Ladygin.

"I wasn't supposed to be doing Le Mans, but then one of our drivers, Viktor Shaitar, decided he would prefer to do it in our GTE Ferrari," explained Salo, who works as a consultant to SMP managing its young driver programs. "We didn't have anyone else, so I put my hand up.

"It's been a while since I've been there in a prototype, but I'm looking forward to it."

SMP has reshuffled its lineup for Le Mans as a result of Salo's inclusion.

Nicolas Minassian and Maurizio Mediani, who contested the Silverstone and Spa World Endurance Championship rounds in the No. 27 car alongside Zlobin, moves over to the No. 37 car to share with Kirill Ladygin, while his brother Anton moves the other way.

SMP's GTE Am class Ferrari, which is run from workshops in the south of France, will be raced by Shaitar, factory driver Andrea Bertolini and Russian Aleksey Basov.

Greaves Motorsport's second Zytek-Nissan Z11SN LMP2 will be raced by James Winslow, a race winner in the Asian Le Mans Series with KCMG last year, Blancpain Sprint Series racer Alessandro Latif and former Renault Megane Trophy driver Michael Munemann.

Originally on Autosport.com