2008 Epsilon Euskadi LMP1

After a successful career with Lola and Penske cars winning 26 races and 3 championships in the American Champ Car series, John has joined Epsilon Euskadi to oversee the design and manufacture of the Epsilon Euskadi LMP1 Sports Car Project.

After leaving Penske in 2002, John has been involved in many consultancy projects including the design and manufacture of the Superfund Formula car, he also race engineered Enrique Bernoldi in the World Series, where he met Michel Lecomte and Joan Villadelprat .. “We had many conversations about the possibility of designing a Le Mans car and how exciting it would be to design and manufacture the car in Spain .” In February 2005 I visited the facility in Azkoitia and was so impressed with the factory and their general philosophy, I agreed to become involved with this exciting new venture. For a designer with my experience there is very little freedom to design racing cars outside of Formula 1, Le Mans is probably the last formula which allows designers to express creativity and innovation in the design of a racing car. This fits in with the Epsilon Euskadi masters course in race car design and technology which is run in parallel with the Le Mans project. “We are probably one of the last race car manufacturers to offer students and young designers the stepping stones which are needed to be a successful race car designer or racing car engineer.”

John has been working on the Le Mans project for over 10 months using simulation programs such as ADAMS , PATRAN and other CFD softwares and has some very interesting and advanced concepts. The car will be a closed cockpit car designed around the new Judd GV5 engine and a very novel semi composite Pankl transverse semi automatic gearbox. The general philosophy of the car design is, low centre of gravity and a very progressive aerodynamic package, this will allow a very easy car to drive especially over long distance endurance races. The car will use the latest manufacturing techniques in composite structures and advanced machining techniques such as EDM for the majority of the metallic parts, this will ensure quality, minimum weight and reliability. All in all a very exciting project to be involved with and a credit to the first Spanish race car manufacturer.