Will the upcoming JS P228 lead Ligier out of the LMP2 wilderness?

Last month, Ligier stunned the endurance racing world when it announced that leading LMP2 teams Inter Europol Competition, Algarve Pro Racing, and Panis Racing had all committed to race with the upcoming Ligier JS P228 in 2028.

Among the many people at Ligier who would have been jumping for joy with this announcement is Mo Murray, the CEO of Ligier Automotive North America (LANA).

“We absolutely need and want to recover that market share,” said Murray. “So does the ACO. They want to see more diversity in the field, and that’s good for everybody.”

LANA appointed Murray as its CEO in May 2024, during the middle of the current Ligier JS P217’s most recent campaign in a major sports car racing championship. It had been seven years since it and other new-generation LMP2 cars debuted in 2017. The JS P217 was far from a terrible car, and early on, a strong team like United Autosports was regularly able to win with it in Europe.

But over time, United Autosports and other early Ligier customers migrated to rival ORECA. The JS P217’s gearbox proved to be the car’s most difficult recurring issue, and that initial migration fed a vicious cycle years later when new-generation LMP2 tires were developed entirely around the now-dominant ORECA 07. By 2023, ORECA was the only LMP2 manufacturer left on the grid at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and in all the other major LMP2 championships (WEC, IMSA, ELMS, and ALMS).

Sean Creech Motorsports brought the JS P217 back to IMSA in 2024, providing fans with some much-desired variety in the category, but achieving little else besides that in a season cut short.

Ligier has seemingly written off the possibility of another team taking a chance on the JS P217, instead moving with full focus towards the debut of the JS P228. And in this new LMP2 ruleset, Ligier is the only other FIA-approved chassis supplier for the category – and thus, the only company that can prevent continued ORECA dominance in LMP2.

IMSA’s decision to postpone the introduction of next-gen LMP2 cars until 2029 will prevent that change from happening immediately, at least in the North American market that Murray oversees. But the delay does provide LANA with another year to have parts ready for the JS P228’s prospective customers in IMSA.

“It actually makes zero difference at all on the car side,” Murray said. “The homologation date didn’t change. We’re still going to race in Europe. We’re still going to test cars in North America in late 2027 into 2028.

“Where it does offer us a little bit of relief is not having to have a fully-stocked parts truck at Daytona in January 2028. That’s the challenge: It’s the support of the teams that we’ll have. It creates an interesting dynamic in the marketplace, in that teams who might have been considering racing on both sides of the Atlantic, if they both launch at the same time, they have to commit at the same time.

“Now they can run in Europe and if they make the wrong choice, whether it’s us or ORECA, then they’re not committed. They can make a different choice for IMSA.”

The FIA and ACO tried to close the gap between ORECA and its competitors during this current LMP2 ruleset, but in the case of Ligier, an aerodynamic “joker” update only went so far at power tracks like Daytona and Le Mans, and left other pain points unresolved. Murray feels confident, however, that the new regulations will deliver a better effort at ensuring balance between the two chassis suppliers.

Both constructors will homologate their cars in the Windshear wind tunnel in North Carolina to eliminate as many discrepancies in data as possible before American track testing begins in late 2027.

“They want plenty of cars from both sides,” says Murray. "So if we both launch, we go testing in ’27, and we go racing in the ELMS (European Le Mans Series) in ’28 – and one car, ours or theirs, is significantly better than the other – the ACO have built into the regulations the ability to make an adjustment. So that’s a sort of safeguard for us.”

Murray believes that how the balance of power between ORECA and Ligier evolves from 2028 will also impact Ligier’s standing as a potential technical partner for manufacturers in the new Hypercar ruleset beginning in 2030. 

“When you look at things holistically, in the new Hypercar rules where there used to be four (LMDh) constructors protected by the rules. That protection has gone away,” said Murray. “So now OEs can use us, or they can use us for pieces of a car, or not.

“If we want to establish ourselves in that market as a technical partner and service provider for anybody who might be running a top-level sports car program anywhere in the world, we need to knock this next P2 car out of the park. This has to be a home run for us. And that’s the way we’re looking at it.

“It’s a statement project, it’s very important to us strategically. We started working on this car as soon as we were selected. And we are pulling out all the stops to make sure that the car we deliver is absolutely as good as we can make it.”

Some may have asked why Inter Europol, Algarve Pro, and Panis Racing all chose to reunite with Ligier rather than stay with ORECA as United Autosports has done. 

“There’s a lot of ORECA teams because that’s the car to have, who feel like they’re just another ORECA customer,” Murray explained.

“They will have one or two favorites who they will operate with, they’ve already selected and announced a couple. But all the rest of them are like, ‘do I just want to be another person ordering parts from ORECA, or do I want some love from Ligier?’”

Murray explained Ligier’s proverbial ‘ace in the hole’ when it came to recruiting teams to switch. “Teams who commit to us, we’re inviting them to actually be part of our development process both in Europe and the U.S.,” he said. “When we go track testing, we want those teams who will eventually run the car to be not just present at those tests, but operating those tests.

“We have a well-established customer support system here [in North America] because of LMP3. We’re at all the races, we have parts, we have trucks, we have tech support – we have all that existing already. And we’re ramping up for our rejoining the P2 family as robustly as we can.”