The 2001 European Le Mans Series season was the only season for the

IMSA The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) is a North American sports car racing sanctioning body based in Daytona Beach, Florida under the jurisdiction of the ACCUS arm of the FIA. It was started by John Bishop, a former executive direc ...

European Le Mans Series. It is a series for

Le Mans Prototype A Le Mans Prototype (LMP) is the type of sports prototype race car used in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, FIA World Endurance Championship, IMSA SportsCar Championship, European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans Series. Le Mans Prototypes were create ...

s (LMP) and

Grand Touring A grand tourer (GT) is a type of car that is designed for high speed and long-distance driving, due to a combination of performance and luxury attributes. The most common format is a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive two-door coupé with either a ...

(GT) race cars divided into 4 classes: LMP900, LMP675, GTS, and GT. It began 17 March 2001 and ended 6 October 2001 after 7 races. The series came about following the expansion of

Don Panoz Donald Panoz ( or ; February 13, 1935 – September 11, 2018) was an American entrepreneur who founded various pharmaceutical companies. Early life Panoz was an Italian-American. His father, Eugene Panunzio, immigrated to the United States f ...

American Le Mans Series The American Le Mans Series (ALMS) was a sports car racing series based in the United States and Canada. It consisted of a series of endurance and sprint races, and was created in the spirit of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The American Le Mans' hea ...

to include European rounds in 2000. The ELMS become a separate series for 2001, although following the same

and ACO rules that the ALMS followed, and even having shared events among the two series. Like the

Petit Le Mans The Petit Le Mans ( French for ''little Le Mans'') is a sports car endurance race held annually at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia, USA. It uses the rules established for the 24 Hours of Le Mans by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO), which a ...

for the ALMS, the 1000 km of Estoril was meant to be a unique event that would earn automatic entries to the

24 Hours of Le Mans The 24 Hours of Le Mans (french: link=no, 24 Heures du Mans) is an endurance-focused Sports car racing, sports car race held annually near the town of Le Mans, France. It is the world's oldest active Endurance racing (motorsport), endurance r ...

for its winners. A lack of interest from the European racing community and competition from the

FIA FIA is the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (English: International Automobile Federation), the world's governing body for all forms of motor sport where four or more wheels are used. Fia or FIA may also refer to: People * Fia Backst ...

's series, meant that this would be the only season of ELMS. Another planned series, known as Asian-Pacific Le Mans Series (APLMS) was planned to begin in late 2001, but never occurred. The Le Mans Endurance Series was eventually renamed the European Le Mans Series in

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...

. Following the demise of the European Le Mans Series, the ACO would attempt to create another European-based sportscar series in 2003 with the more successful

Le Mans Endurance Series The European Le Mans Series (abbreviated as ELMS) is a European sports car racing endurance series inspired by the 24 Hours of Le Mans race and organized by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO). The European Le Mans Series is similar to the fo ...

History

With the

Automobile Club de l'Ouest The Automobile Club de l'Ouest (English: Automobile Club of the West), sometimes abbreviated to ACO, is the largest automotive group in France. It was founded in 1906 by car building and racing enthusiasts, and is most famous for being the organ ...

(ACO) allowing

to bring the rules and racing formulas of the

to America with the creation of the

in 1998, Don Panoz attempted to build up a series to be based around Petit Le Mans. The aged

sportscar series was taken over and became the new American Le Mans Series, and met with much success in

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

. Following this success, Panoz attempting to bring sportscar racing back to Europe, which had lacked a major sportscar series since the demise of the

World Sportscar Championship The World Sportscar Championship was the world series run for sports car racing by the FIA from 1953 to 1992. The championship evolved from a small collection of the most important sportscar, endurance, and road racing events in Europe and No ...

in 1992. This led to the 2000 American Le Mans Series season, which included two races in Europe as the

Nürburgring The is a 150,000 person capacity motorsports complex located in the town of Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It features a Formula One, Grand Prix race track built in 1984, and a long "North loop" track, built in the 1920s, around t ...

and

Silverstone Circuit Silverstone Circuit is a motor racing circuit in England, near the Northamptonshire villages of Towcester, Silverstone and Whittlebury. It is the home of the British Grand Prix, which it first hosted as the 1948 British Grand Prix. The 1950 ...

, as well as a round in Australia. These races would serve as a precursor to what would become the separate European Le Mans Series in 2001. The European Le Mans Series was launched for 2001 with 5 races, including a premier 1000 km race at

Estoril Estoril () is a town in the Municipality of Cascais, Portugal, on the Portuguese Riviera. It is a tourist destination, with luxury hotels, beaches, and the Casino Estoril. It has been home to numerous royal families and celebrities, and has host ...

, which would be the European equivalent of the 1000 mile

and earn automatic entries to the

for each class winner. To aid in the development of the ELMS, the 2001 season shared some races between both ALMS and ELMS. The

12 Hours of Sebring The 12 Hours of Sebring is an annual motorsport endurance race for sports cars held at Sebring International Raceway, on the site of the former Hendricks Army Airfield World War II air base in Sebring, Florida, US. The event is the second round ...

and

, normally ALMS races, were considered optional races for ELMS teams. At the same time, the ELMS races at

Donington Park Donington Park is a motorsport circuit located near Castle Donington in Leicestershire, England. The circuit business is now owned by Jonathan Palmer's MotorSport Vision organisation, and the surrounding Donington Park Estate, still owned b ...

and

Jarama Jarama () is a river in central Spain. It flows north to south, and passes east of Madrid where the El Atazar Dam is built on a tributary, the Lozoya River. It flows into the river Tagus in Aranjuez. The Manzanares is a tributary of the Jarama ...

were considered optional for ALMS teams. This allowed for the possibility of boosting the draw from international teams to either series. Unfortunately the series was unable to earn much attention from European sportscar teams, especially since the final

FIA Sportscar Championship The FIA Sportscar Championship was a sports car racing series created by John Mangoletsi and was eventually taken control of by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). It was a series similar to the FIA GT Championship, concentrating ...

and

FIA GT Championship The FIA GT Championship was a sports car racing series organized by the Stéphane Ratel Organisation (SRO) at the behest of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The championship was mostly concentrated in Europe, but throughout ...

series used similar cars, but different rules which would require teams to modify their cars or buy new cars to comply with ELMS rules. This means that the car count for the 2001 season was small. For the ELMS events that included ALMS teams, very few teams actually bothered to make the trip across the Atlantic to participate in races that appeared to have very few serious competitors. Of the ALMS teams that did race, nearly all were factory backed squads that had the money to spend on transporting their equipment to Europe. Thus the entry lists for each race fell from 25 at the beginning of the season to a mere 14 at season's end, with some classes only having one or two competitors. With a lack of involvement from teams, and less interest from the media due to the lack of teams, the European Le Mans Series was forced to fold following the 2001 season. The demise of the European Le Mans Series would not be the end of sportscar racing in Europe. In 2003, the

announced their intentions to create their own European-based series, named the Le Mans Endurance Series, which would be similar to the European Le Mans Series, but feature only 1000 km races instead of the shorter, 2 Hour 45 Minute races used by ELMS. This series would be far more successful, with a large number of participants from the very beginning.

APLMS

At the same time in the development of the European Le Mans Series,

also proposed the idea of yet another series. Originally named the Asian Le Mans Series, it was later known as the Asian-Pacific Le Mans Series (APLMS). Like the European Le Mans Series, this APLMS would bring an ACO-backed sportscar series to Asia and the Pacific. This could be seen as a resurrection of the

All Japan Sports Prototype Championship The , abbreviated as JSPC, formed by the Japan Automobile Federation, was a domestic championship which took place in Japan for Group C and IMSA GTP prototype cars and also featured cars that were eligible for touring car racing in its earlier yea ...

(JSPC) which had ended in 1992. The ACO had previous backed a single Japanese event, the 1999 Le Mans Fuji 1000km which combined Le Mans cars with

JGTC Super GT (stylized as SUPER GT) is a grand touring car racing series that began in 1993. Launched as the , generally referred to as either the JGTC or the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship, the series was renamed to Super GT in 2005. It is ...

machines for automatic entries to the

2000 24 Hours of Le Mans The 2000 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 68th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on 17 and 18 June 2000. Pre-race After the 1999 race, most of the manufacturers in the top classes went in different directions. BMW and Toyota went into Formula ...

. This idea was followed by the American Le Mans Series with the 2000 Race of a Thousand Years race at the

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. These two events served as a precursor to the planned APLMS series, and at the time of the creation of ELMS, Don Panoz announced his intention to hold an exhibition APLMS race at

Sepang International Circuit The Sepang International Circuit ( ms, Litar Antarabangsa Sepang) is a motorsport race track in Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia. It is located approximately south of Kuala Lumpur, and close to Kuala Lumpur International Airport. It hosted the For ...

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in late 2001. As the ELMS season went on, it became apparent that there was a lack of interest in the series, and Don Panoz decided that the APLMS would likely have even less interest. Thus the APLMS exhibition race and all plans for a series were scrapped.

Schedule

Besides Sebring, Estoril, and Petit Le Mans, all events were 2 hours and 45 minutes in length. † - Joint event with ALMS.

Season results

Overall winner in bold.

Teams' Championship

Points are awarded to the finishers in the following order: * 25-21-19-17-15-14-13-12-11-10-... Exception being for 12 Hours of Sebring, 1000 km of Estoril, and Petit Le Mans which awarded in the following order: * 30-26-24-22-20-19-18-17-16-15-... Points were awarded in two separate ways. Only the best finish out of the two American rounds (1 and 7) was included. In addition to this, only the top five finishes for the entire season were included. Points earned but not counting towards the team's total are listed in ''italics''. Teams only score the points of their highest finishing entry in each race. Teams which participated at Sebring and Petit Le Mans but did not attend any European events are also not counted towards the ELMS championships.

LMP900 standings

LMP675 standings

GTS standings

GT standings

References

External links

IMSA European Le Mans Series 2001
{{Le Mans Series

European Le Mans Series The European Le Mans Series (abbreviated as ELMS) is a European sports car racing endurance series inspired by the 24 Hours of Le Mans race and organized by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO). The European Le Mans Series is similar to the fo ...

European Le Mans Series seasons