Collisions of Small Nuclei in the Thermal Model

An analysis is presented of the expectations of the thermal model for particle production in collisions of small nuclei. The maxima observed in particle ratios of strange particles to pions as a function of beam energy in heavy ion collisions, are reduced when considering smaller nuclei. Of particular interest is the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{/}{\pi }^{+}$ ratio shows the strongest maximum which survives even in collisions of small nuclei.