Oreca 07
The Oreca 07 is a Le Mans Prototype built by French manufacturer Oreca to meet the 2017 FIA/ACO LMP2 regulations. It made its official race debut in the opening round of the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the 24 Hours of Daytona, and its FIA World Endurance Championship debut at the 2017 6 Hours of Silverstone. The car is the successor to the Oreca 05.
Its performance and reliability versus rival LMP2 sports cars has allowed the 07 to become the de facto number one option for prospective racing teams, finding more buyers every year since its launch, including those switching away from other brands. Since first launching in 2017, nearly all teams competing in series featuring an LMP2 class or similar have used the Oreca 07. Over 140 Oreca 07s have been developed by Oreca in-house.
Development
The preparation of the prototype traces back to the development of the Oreca 05. The 05 was developed with the consideration of what the factory knew about the new technical rules for the LMP2 class in the FIA World Endurance Championship for 2017. Taking prior knowledge from the Oreca 05's performance into account, Oreca decided to develop a new car and base it around the predecessor. Their goal was to maximize the performance by focusing on the energy and resource usage. The team opted to use this strategy not only to build a car based on a proven predecessor, but also to allow teams to update their Oreca 05 race cars within financial reason. The chassis of the Oreca 07 is mainly based on the 05, with its monocoque taking less of a priority to develop. The Oreca 07 came equipped with a Gibson GK428 V8 engine producing. Years later in 2020, power output was decreased by 60 hp following the announcement of the Le Mans Hypercar regulations.The car performed its first factory shakedown test in late October 2016 at Circuit Paul Ricard.
As a result of Oreca's development direction, the 07 quickly became the most dominant car in its class in 2017. After the 2017 24 Hours of Le Mans, the car's sheer performance difference against the field prompted the Automobile Club de l'Ouest to allow the rival LMP2 brands, Dallara, Ligier, and Riley/Multimatic, to create extensive upgrade packages to match the performance of the Oreca 07 while also preventing Oreca from doing so in the process. Despite such attempts, the Oreca 07 continued to succeed as a chassis, which has also resulted in teams heavily favouring Oreca over other brands when selecting a chassis to compete with in LMP2 racing.
Oreca continue to receive healthy demand for the 07, with over 140 cars developed by Oreca as of 2025, which includes chassis for the Acura ARX-05 programme, updated Oreca 05 race cars, and rebadged Alpine and Aurus cars. The 100th chassis was delivered to Cool Racing for the 2022 24 Hours of Le Mans and later displayed at Oreca's showroom.
Variations
Acura ARX-05
A variation of the prototype, the Acura ARX-05, was created for IMSA's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Prototype class under the DPi regulations. The car was developed through a partnership between Honda Performance Development and Oreca. The powerplant of the vehicle is a production-based 3.5-litre Acura AR35TT twin-turbocharged V6. Other alterations from the 07 include Acura-specific bodywork.From 2018 to 2020, Team Penske entered a pair of ARX-05s, winning the title in the latter two seasons. For 2021 and 2022, Wayne Taylor Racing and Meyer Shank Racing each campaigned one of the ARX-05s previously run by Penske.