WEC: Rebellion Racing switches to AER turbo engine

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The Rebellion Racing team has announced a new engine partnership for the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship season Its Rebellion R-One LMP-1 cars will be powered by twin-turbo engines from Advanced Engine Research. Rebellion Racing will switch from naturally aspirated Toyota RV8K-LM 3.4-liter V8 engines to AER P60 V6 GDI twin-turbocharged power units.

"We are delighted to announce our new association with Advanced Engine Research for the 2015 FIA WEC season and beyond, this partnership is exciting news for Rebellion Racing," said team manager Bart Hayden. "We are pleased to welcome them as our new engine partner and look forward to building a productive and successful working relationship.

"The AER P60 engine has shown good performance on track already and we believe that this engine will marry well to the Rebellion R-One chassis. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Toyota and TMG who have been so closely associated with our team and their continued hard work since we started our engine partnership at the end of the 2010 season. We have enjoyed a strong relationship that has resulted in many class successes and overall victories over the past four years.

Because of the late change for the team and chassis partner ORECA, Rebellion will have to miss the first round of the WEC, Hayden confirmed. The team intends to make the debut of the new Rebellion R-One-AER cars around the time of the 6 Hours of Spa.

"We are faced with a significant amount of work to upgrade the R-One cars to accommodate the P60 engine and we are fully determined to do it in the best way possible," Hayden said. "That is why we will not be ready in time to debut the new cars at the season-opening race at Silverstone."

Rebellion will field two entries in the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, carrying numbers 12 and 13.

The team described the move as "a forward-thinking decision," because an engine change was certain at the end of the 2015 season as this would have been the last year of the RV8K-LM. Rebellion is confident that AER will provide an extremely competitive engine package and that the P60 engine configuration gives the best maximum power/torque/efficiency combination available on the market for an LMP-1 team.

"We thank Rebellion Racing for choosing to work with AER and to use our AER P60 V6 GDI twin-turbocharged LMP-1 engine," said Mike Lancaster, Advanced Engine Research Managing Director "It's a fantastic opportunity for us to work with such a well-respected and successful racing team and we have already been impressed with the dedication and in-depth knowledge of the entire team. We look forward to the 2015 WEC and Le Mans race with Rebellion Racing and we hope to build on the team's successes for the future. "