Photo : Copyright Rollcentre Racing

 

Rollcentre competed in the Le Mans events from 2004 to 2008. In the first two years, they raced two Dallara Judd LM P1s. Headlining performances included leading overall in the 2005 Le Mans 24 Hours, and successful appearances as far afield as Sebring and Istanbul. In 2006 Rollcentre took to LM P2 and the new Radical chassis powered by Judd, and again delivered great performances in a tough year.
 
In 2007 Rollcentre moved back to LM P1, with Pescarolo Judd, and in the Le Mans 24 Hours finished an astonishing 4th overall, narrowly missing out on a podium. This great achievement, matched only by a private British Team some 10 years previously, earned Rollcentre and owner driver Martin Short, and fellow drivers Stuart Hall and Joao Barbosa, many plaudits. 2008 then became last year for Le Mans for the Rollcentre team.
 
Martin Short is also well known for working with TVR, developing the Tuscan R which made its way eventually to Le Mans under the guidance of Lawrence Tomlinson, owner and driver of Ginetta Cars. Short also bought the Mosler brand of race and road cars to Europe, and Rollcentre won the British GT Championship in 2003 in a Mosler GT car and is still supporting and manufacturing Mosler race cars (which are not eligible for Le Mans).
 
Martin Short: “After some amazing years racing with the ACO, and the Le Mans Series, I never really envisaged being able to return. However Lawrence Tomlinson’s and Ewan Baldry’s (Designer) vision of Ginetta Juno's new LM P3 car caught my attention. Lawrence invited me to the launch of the car on a wet evening in Leeds, and I was so impressed by the prospects of this new visionary class, that I agreed to buy the next day. This car is a proper Le Mans Prototype, with good rules, good build and equipment standards mandated by the ACO. Ginetta Juno have, in true racer Tomlinson style, hit the ground running hard with this car. The finances to buy and run the car are well controlled by the rules, and it’s a terrific package with Nissan Engines, Xtrac gear boxes, Megaline, Cosworth and Alcon, along with Toyota wind tunnel designed Aero, and of course, Ewans experience of building prototypes for many years with Juno. I am really excited to be involved at the beginning of this new adventure, and really happy to work with Ginetta again after helping out with their GT3 development and a 24 Hour race a few years ago. Lawrence and I both started our Endurance racing with TVR and our paths have been inter-twined for many years, so to now join him and Ginetta, another thoroughly British company, seems like completing the circle. I have a great team of experienced people who have worked with me in so many Le Mans races that are totally stoked to be racing Prototypes again with the ACO. The final piece of the jigsaw, is that my ex engineer Michael ‘Cushty’ Tallentire who worked with me at all those Le Mans races, went to work with Lawrence at Ginetta when our programs stopped, and all he wanted Ginetta to do was to go Prototype racing. Well he died suddenly at a young age on the eve of Xmas eve in 2013, and now, almost a year to the date, we are all almost together again, and his son Alex will be working with us. Its very spooky, and unbelievably exciting. I’ve been waiting for 6 years for something to get my attention, and this is it."
 
"We will get our car before the first race at Silverstone, and time will be tight for us, as it will be for the other five Ginetta LM P3’s being built simultaneously. I am not intending driving at this stage, but I will be managing the team, using my experience along with top race engineer Lee Penn, to get our car to the front. The prize for winning LMP3 is an entry for LM P2 in 2016, and that will be our goal. To that end, we are looking for drivers, and partners to become part of the ‘Rollcentre Back To Le Mans Adventure’.”

- Rollcentre Racing press release -