A former official Peugeot driver who reached the overall podium twice at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2008 and 2011, Nicolas Minassian is now joining American team DragonSpeed, but to not to take the wheel of the Oreca 07 entered in the European Le Mans Series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, although he will be a reserve driver (not approved by the Le Mans sporting regulations) for the team.

These last three years, the very British Marseille native has been a member of Russian team SMP Racing with which he competed in rounds of the World Endurance Championship (WEC) and the ELMS in LM P2 all while serving as a coach to the outfit's Russian drivers.

Nicolas Minassian: "Working on the sporting side of the team allows me a very free reign to contribute in a number of ways, to help Elton and the rest of the team to do exactly that. I’m very happy too to be working on the business development side of the operation, looking to the future and using my knowledge and contacts on a timescale that was often not possible during my driving career."

Failing to build his own team in LM P2, as he had hoped to do for a time, Nicolas Minassian will now take on a new challenge in his attempt to follow in the successful footsteps of other former drivers-turned-leadership, such as Olivier Panis, with own active outfit, and Reinhold Joest.

Quotation from team press release.

Photo: Nicolas Minassian competed in the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans with the SMP Racing team and finished seventh in the LM P2 class.