WEC: Rebellion confirms 2016 P1 program

Rebellion Racing – named for its primary sponsor, Rebellion Timepieces – has confirmed that its 2016 racing program will center around running a pair of upgraded Rebellion R-One AER LMP1 cars in the FIA World Endurance Championship, which includes the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The Swiss-based team will be looking to re-confirm its status as the best privateer sportscar team at the highest level of endurance racing. In 2015, Rebellion extended its domination in the category by winning its fourth straight FIA WEC Endurance Trophy for LMP1 Privateer Teams.

The Rebellion Racing cars will be powered by AER engines for the second year in a row. Both AER and the team have gained experience and knowledge to improve reliability and efficiency of the P60 V6 twin-turbo engines.

The driver squad will remain the same as Nick Heidfeld, Nicolas Prost, Mathias Beche, Dominik Kraihamer, Alexandre Imperatori and Mathéo Tuscher will share driving duties.

"We have submitted entries for two cars for the full FIA WEC and 24 Hours of Le Mans," said team manager Bart Hayden. "We will continue to use the AER P60 engine; last season it was a new installation in the Rebellion R-One chassis and while we achieved our target of taking the titles, there was still a lot of room for improvement on the reliability of the package. Together with AER we have been working hard on addressing the issues that came up in 2015 and we will make the necessary steps forward.

"We have a testing program scheduled already and, unlike last year where we missed the opening rounds of the season, this year we will be ready from the beginning and we will be at the WEC Prologue at Paul Ricard in March."