TOP RIGHT: Greezing wizzard Philip de Vries dominated with his team the 2002 LMS. They won all four endurance races, far ahead over all other competitors. PICS: courtesy Stéphane Martin.

December 6 - The LMS Series, organised by Tamar Nelwan's SSP, has been completely dominated by Philip de Vries (a former wing car racer) and his team mates Robert Baas, Marcel Oosterling and Eddy Witkamp. They won without problems the four endurance races of the series, having been TQ-ed at each round and having realised the fastest lap. It's not easy to discover the secret behind DVR's success. Of course there is the wonderfull set-up of the car, done by the grey wizzard Philip de Vries, but one hardly can deny that the team was during the whole system extremely coherent with four fast and reliable racers. Last year's winner, B-24 Hotslot Amsterdam, has finished as runner-up, however 144 points down to the winners. Here the team changed from race to race and of all entrants Tamar Nelson was the unique racer to have raced at the four meetings. Astonishing third was the German team X-Rookies of dr. Günther "Deutsche Eiche" Riehl. Here too the team changed from event to event. Best racer here was undoubtedly Michael Niemas (who didn't show at the last round, where the team finished as runner-up). In total 10 teams made the 4 rounds, 8 other one or more, but not all rounds. If one looks at the individual ranking it stirs that 13 of the 16 racers having finished within the top-8 have the Dutch nationality, and that Belgian and German racers were in 2002 less successfull than in the preceding years. Essentially the LMS is a regional championship, but now that the series has been upgraded to one of the 30 most important slot-racing events of the season, it may be expected that several international racers will find the way to the LMS. However, there seem to be several handicaps. (1) The fact that the organising SSP works with an extremely complicated rule book, differing at several points from the model car rules accepted in the rest of the world, can be the main reason that it will take time in the future before the international top-guns find the way to the LMS. (2) Another handicap is the fact that all LMS races go over complete week-ends and that several racers have a social and familial life, preventing them to assist all meetings. That has clearly be understood by the SSP who plays with the idea to organise in 2003 five meetings, two of them being sprint races where not only Le Mans prototypes, but also FIA GT-S cars and FIA N-GT cars will be accepted, with separate standings in each class. (3) A third and last handicap is the fact that the SSP races are famous for their nearly endless discussions on technical rules being not appreciated by most racers who come to race instead of assisting never ending briefings.  Stéphane Martin, who made at his own web site a splendid photo report of the meeting at Kamp Linfort,  explained the situation as follows: 

We are sure that those are only child diseases of the relative young series and that in the future the problematic rule book will be reduced to more normal proportions, avoiding such long and fatiguing briefings and track call discussions.  [JPVR]