Beechdean Mansell Le Mans Update

PH blows £25 on this year's 'must have' Le Mans hattage

Testing weather earlier in the year

When 'Red 5' announced audacious plans to enter the top LMP1 category at Le Mans this year, driving for a team run by an ice-cream making dairy farmer who has never campaigned anything faster than an Aston Martin GT car, we knew who we'd be cheering for.

Don't worry, PH won't be turning its back on the LMP1 Astons, and we'll definitely keep an eye on Jaguar's return in GT2. But for our money, the new Beechdean Mansell Motorsport effort ticks all the boxes for Le Mans fans adventuring to foreign shores in the hope of a British good news story - and in true underdog style they'll have done bloody well to make it to the start line!

That was reinforced yesterday when PH paid a visit to team HQ in Buckinghamshire. We were there to sort out details of our competition to win a VIP visit to the team's LMP1 test at Silverstone next week, and found team principal Andrew Howard conducting what looked like four meetings at once, while their single Ginetta Zytec 09S racing car sat - largely unattended - in the garage.

Make a note of the lids for race weekend

Only the driver's tiny carbon chassis tub sat there, actually, as the body panels haven't arrived from the factory, and the engine is resting forlornly in the corner of the workshop waiting for something to be bolted into. With a little more than three weeks to go, it's probably not a sight you'd expect to see at Audi's race HQ, but apparently it only takes three days to stick the whole thing together...

Still, this is Le Mans, and for a novice team just being there at the finish will be a victory. And if they do last the full 24hrs, well, who knows where the luck will fall? As F1, CART and even Touring Car fans know, if any one can pull a surprise out of the hat it's the inimitable Red 5 - Nigel Mansell himself.

Sure the odds are stacked against them, but to help keep this new all-British campaign on track the team has just launched its subscriber Race Club. For just £25 you can sign up and receive a team baseball hat, a discount on all team merchandise plus ticket offers, a newsletter, regular team updates and competitions to win exclusive prizes.

As team boss Andrew told us yesterday: "We're not doing this to make a profit, every member who joins Race Club will literally be helping us get the car around the track, and every single team T-Shirt represents a few more yards of Le Mans tarmac!"

When he puts it like that, can you afford not to add that £25 membership to your own Le Mans budget? We have, and we'll know if you haven't because you won't get the hat...

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