I am on a roll today, ladies and gents. I thought it appropriate for the centenary edition of Le Mans, to break down the competitors we will be seeing in the classes at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this June. Let's start with the 16 entries in Hypercar. This is the largest prototype field we have seen at Le Mans in well over a decade. My gosh. Sports car racing on the world stage is back to full strength after a major number of lean years at least in World Endurance over the last five years. Now, there will be genuine competition. The first two entries, cars #2 and #3 come from Cadillac as they return to Le Mans for the first time in 21 years. Cadillac Racing, the factory team has two V Series R's in the race (the recently renamed Cadillac Hypercar). Their driver lineups include five of six drivers, with one additional name yet to be pulled out of the hat. Car #2 will feature the full-season WEC lineup for the team of Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn, and Richard Westbrook.
The sister #3 entry will have Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande at the controls. We have yet to hear who the third driver for #3 will be. Car #4 is next for the new Floyd Vanwall Racing Team. Vanwall is a name from the late 1950s that raced moderately successfully in Formula 1 and this year they are back with a Hypercar entry, the Vanwall Vandervell 680, from England. 1997 Formula 1 World Champion and 1995 Indianapolis 500 winner, Jacques Villeneuve is their lead driver sharing with Frenchman Tom Dillman and Argentinian driver Esteban Guerrieri who has had recent success in both touring car and sports car racing.
Porsche returns to Le Mans in the capable hands of Penske Motorsport and "The Captain" Roger Penske, who have their full-season registered Porsche 963's entered at Le Mans. As you well know, Penske and Porsche have cars in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship as well. Their WEC cars will be shared by six top drivers, contracted by the Porsche factory at Stuttgart. American Dane Cameron spearheads the #5 Porsche alongside Michael Christensen of Denmark and Fred Makowiecki of France, two drivers who were successful in Porsche's previous GTE Pro factory effort with the 911 RSR. Likewise, their sister 963 entry will have Kevin Estre of France, Andre Lotterer of Germany (a former winner with Audi), and Belgium's Laurens Vanthoor, at the controls.
Toyota return, as now, five-time defending champions of Le Mans. They have won every race held at Circuit de la Sarthe in recent history between 2018 and 2022. Their winning trios from years past will be back to defend their multiple crowns. Car #7, the first of the two GR010 Hybrids will be captained by Brit Mike Conway with Kamui Kobayashi of Japan and Jose Maria Lopez of Argentina as co-drivers, while the defending champions in car #8 return for another crack at it. Swiss driver Sebastien Buemi will be going for his fifth Le Mans triumph which would tie him with greats such as Derek Bell, Emmanuelle Pirro, and Frank Biela.
He is already tied at four with Olivier Gendebien, Yannick Dalmas, and Henri Pescarolo. Their co-driver Brendon Hartley, the New Zealander, he has three Le Mans wins under his hat along with his competitor at Porsche, Andre Lotterer and a massive number of legends, both former and current including Kazuki Nakajima, Benoit Treluyer, Marcel Fassler, Marco Werner, Rinaldo "Dindo" Cappello, Allan McNish, Klaus Ludwig, Al Holbert, Hurley Haywood, 1961 Formula 1 World Champion Phil Hill, Luigi Chinetti, and "Bentley Boy" Woolf Barnato. Their Japanese co-driver Ryo Hirakawa scored his first Le Mans triumph last year and is looking for more.
In Hypercar, we move next to a customer Porsche team with a 963. This is Hertz Team Jota from England. Their team has been a top contender in LMP2 for years and now, they step up to Hypercar and have a capable trio, 2/3rds of which steps up to the plate from the LMP2 class. Will Stevens and Antonio Felix Da Costa, will be joined by Yifei Ye, a standout of LMP2 racing and a newly signed Porsche factory driver who has been placed in their team. Who comes next? Ferrari. Ferrari are back at the 24 Hours of Le Mans as a factory backed prototype team for the first time in half a century. They finally have more on their agenda than just Formula One where they won everything there was to win during the Michael Schumacher dynasty.
Now, they are in search of their first overall Le Mans triumph in nearly six decades. The last time it happened was in 1965 with Jochen Rindt and Masten Gregory. Rindt and Gregory drove their 4-liter Group 3 prototype Ferrari to victory at the time. They have had success with semi works and privateer cars in the GT ranks, but this is the first serious factory Le Mans effort for The Prancing Horse in half a century. Ferrari have chosen half a dozen top drivers for their team. It is a mix of drivers who successfully competed with them at the GTE Pro level and now that class is defunct, so what to do they do? They step back up to the prototype arena.
Their lineup is stacked with talent that is familiar from the GTE Pro days, just the same as what we are seeing from Porsche. The #50 Ferrari 499P will see Antonio Fuoco of Italy as lead driver, sharing with Miguel Molina of Spain and Danish ace Nicklas Nielsen, while in the #51, we have the dynamic duo of Alessandro Pier Guidi of Italy and James Calado from England, joined by Italian Antonio Giovinazzi, who is part of the Ferrari family thanks to his Formula 1 endeavors years ago with Alfa Romeo. Ferrari want their tenth overall Le Mans win and will fight for it indeed. The party in the Hypercar class is not over. We still have more contenders to talk about.
Porsche and Team Penske are bringing their IMSA 963 to Le Mans as a third wheel and as more reinforcements along with the Jota machine for the Porsche brigade. Brazilian Felipe Nasr is currently the one driver listed. We have seen other Porsche drivers on that team competing in IMSA and my guess would be that these drivers will be slotted into the third Penske car somehow. But it will be a coin flip. Nasr may very well be joined by any of the following. Nick Tandy, Matt Campbell, and Matthieu Jaminet are my guesses and one of them may be demoted to a reserve driver role since Le Mans only allows three-driver teams and not four like we see at Daytona sometimes, although the routines for the top teams at the Rolex 24 have included three or four drivers in the recent past.
Peugeot will be making their return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time since 2011 and they come in having won the race, three times. They did so back-to-back with the awesome V10 powered 905 Group C car, the car that many believe killed the Group C formula in 1992 and '93. Then they took their diesel powered LMP1 challenger, the 908 HDI FAP and won the race again in 2009 beating their formidable diesel rivals at Audi who had won ten of the eleven previous Le Mans events on the trot. In 2022, they joined the WEC after Le Mans because their 9X8 Hypercar was not fully developed. This year, they are in it with a pair of fully developed factory backed machines and the standard bearer for the automotive conglomerate, Stellantis.
Their '92 and '93 wins went to the 905's with the driven trio in '92 being Yannick Dalmas who scored his first Le Mans win alongside British aces Mark Blundell and Derek Warwick. Warwick had driven for years for Jaguar. Then, in 1993, Peugeot came back and blitzed the field again, this time in another 905 shared by Geoff Brabham from Australia (part of the legendary Brabham family), and Frenchmen Eric Helary and Christophe Bouchut. Bouchut is one of few drivers to win both Le Mans and Daytona in their career. Hurley Haywood is another. Spearheading their two-car assault on Le Mans to bring glory to the homeland in France, will again be half a dozen drivers split between the two 9X8 hybrids with their turbo V6 power.
Dane Mikkel Jensen sharing with Scotsman Paul di Resta and Frenchman Jean Eric Vergne spearhead the #93 with the #94 Peugeot in the hands of Loic Duval of France, American Gustavo Menezes, and Switzerland's Nico Muller. Now we come to an entry, near and dear to my heart. My friends at Action Express Racing have been granted an at-large IMSA entry and we will run the #311 Whelen Engineering Cadillac at Le Mans! Kudos to our team, for getting a Le Mans entry, to team boss Bob Johnson and to team manager Gary Nelson! Our dynamic trio of Pipo Derani, Alexander Sims, and Jack Aitken, will be the drivers as we try our hand at Le Mans for the first time. Sure, we have three overall triumphs at the Rolex 24. We have victories at the 12 Hours of Sebring, the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen, and the Petit Le Mans. We have numerous IMSA championships. But this is Le Mans. It is the pinnacle. Read my earlier editorial to find out my thoughts.
Glickenhaus Racing and the eponymously named team will be back with a two-car effort with the Glickenhaus 007 LMH to try again under team boss Jim Glickenhaus. Their two-car team has four of six drivers confirmed in cars #708 and #709. Romain Dumas is lead driver in the full-season WEC car while Franck Mailleux is captain of their Le Mans only entry, car #709, with two more drivers yet to be signed up for each of the two cars. As you can see, a massive Hypercar field! The competition will be epic! Cadillac, Porsche, Toyota, Ferrari, Peugeot, Vanwall, and Glickenhaus! No Acura nor BMW this year, but the future, we'll have to wait and see.
LMP2, in spite of the massive Hypercar growth for the centenary, remains the most subscribed class at Le Mans insofar as entries. 24 LMP2 cars will be entered at Le Mans this year. All of them, bar two, will be French Oreca chassis, with two Alpine's thrown in, and every single car is using the spec 4.2 liter Gibson Technologies naturally aspirated V8 motor that is customary in the LMP2 field worldwide whether in North America, Europe, or Asia. Prema Orlen Team leads the LMP2 brigade with Ecuadorian American Juan Manuel Correa as lead driver, sharing with Filip Ugran of Romania, and Dutchman Bent Viscaal. Prema have won a ton of races and return to Le Mans again as they were also present in LMP2 in 2022. They scored two Le Mans entries and used both. The second Prema Oreca is #63 and will be shared by Mirko Bortolotti of Italy, French lady driver Doriane Pin, and former Formula 1 driver Daniil Kvyat.
Vector Sport from England and Tower Motorsport from the United States and IMSA, are next up. These teams each have confirmed a single driver so far. It will be Ryan Cullen, the Irishman as lead driver for Vector Sport and Canadian John Farano at Tower Motorsport. Nielsen Racing will enter their second Le Mans 24 Hours after several years of racing the Asian Le Mans Series, with the trio of Ben Hanley from England, American Rodrigo Sales, and Swiss driver Mathias Beche. United Autosport from England have been a formidable force in WEC and at Le Mans in LMP2 for a number of years and they are back with a two-car team with their #22 and #23 Oreca's. Portuguese driver Filipe Albuquerque teams up with England's Phil Hanson in the first car and we'll see who the third driver will be, while in #23 it is Tom Blomqvist and Oliver Jarvis sharing with young 16-year-old American standout Josh Pierson.
With Jota Sport expanding their team to Hypercar, with the Porsche, their sole LMP2 entry will have a formidable roster as well. #28 is another Oreca and shall see Danish drivers Oliver Rasmussen and David Heinemeier Hanson, teaming up with Brazilian Pietro Fittipaldi, grandson of F1 champion and Indy 500 winner, Emerson Fittipaldi. Duqueine Team are back this year in 2023 in LMP2 with Austrian Rene Binder, sharing alongside Neel Jani, from Switzerland, and Chilean Nico Pino. Jani won Le Mans in 2016 for Porsche in the 919 Hybrid LMP1 car. WRT are back and have won this race before in LMP2 as well as numerous GT3 titles. Currently, Sean Gelael from Indonesia is the only registered driver.
WRT will also be fielding a second car, #41, and the only listed driver there is Angolan Rui Andrade. Four of six drivers are confirmed in the two-car Oreca team at Inter Europol Competition, the Polish team sponsored by a Polish commercial bakery. Yum. American Charles Crews will be the lead driver in the #32 entry for this team awaiting two more co-drivers while the more familiar #34 car that has run in WEC, European Le Mans, and Asian Le Mans racing, has team leader Jakub Smiechowski from Poland teaming with Spaniard Albert Costa and Swiss ace Fabio Scherer. Alpine Elf Team step back from their paused Hypercar program into LMP2 with a two-car assault in the class.
Cars #35 and #36 are entered and have their main drivers as leaders in each. Brazilian Andre Negrao in #35 and Frenchman Matthieu Vaxiviere in #36. We await to see how their full trios of drivers will shake out. Cool Racing are up next, and they too have a double whammy LMP2 entry at Le Mans, the French outfit led by Nico Lapierre. Lapierre is set to share the #37 Oreca with Swiss driver Alexander Coigny and Dane Malthe Jakobsen. Their sister car #47 is to be driven by French domiciled drivers Reshad De Gerus and Vladislav Lomkar. Domiciled? Well, licensed anyway.
When you see a nation's flag, it either means the nationality of the driver, or more likely, his or her license and where it was obtained to go racing. Frenchman Francois Heriau is the only listed driver thus far for the #39 Oreca of Graff Racing, eligible from their Asian Le Mans Series results. We shall see who else joins that team. Ditto for the #43 DKR Engineering Oreca, another eligible car from Asian Le Mans Series competition. Coming up, yours truly does hope to cover Asian Le Mans Series action. Algarve Pro Racing, the LMP2 winners at the 2023 Rolex 24 are at Le Mans. Aussie James Allen, who brought their car to the Daytona LMP2 victory, is joined by American's Colin Braun and George Kurtz.
French outfit IDEC Sport are back at Le Mans once more and of course, are a stalwart of European Le Mans Series competition as well. This is an effort with a mix of experience and youth. Paul Loup Chatin and Paul Lafargue both from France, anchor the driving trio and in the fold too, is Germany's Lorents Horr who has done well in LMP2 and LMP3 alike. Proven European Le Mans Series contenders round out the LMP2 field with Panis Racing, AF Corse, and Racing Team Turkey. AF Corse has an LMP2 entry along with overseeing the Ferrari Hypercar effort. Formula 1 veteran and 1996 Monaco Grand Prix winner for Ligier Olivier Panis is team boss and the driver lineup includes Dutchmen Tijmen van der Helm and Joh van Uitert, and Manuel Maldonado from Venezuela. For the AF Corse LMP2 effort, Francois Perrodo of France is lead driver with countryman Norman Nato and Ben Barnicoat from England who has been a GT racing stalwart for years at brands such as McLaren and Lexus.
Racing Team Turkey who have, been omnipresent in European and Asian Le Mans Series as well as at the 24 Hours, round out the LMP2 armada with native son Salih Yoluc as their top driver and they are in the process of securing the services of two more drivers for their Le Mans effort. We move next, to the revamped LM GTE division with now only an Am driver component to the entry and the whole class. Because of the influx and advent of Hypercar and all the manufacturer involvement, the privateer based LM GTE Am class is a holdover for one more season before we project and anticipate the arrival of the GT3 cars in manufacturer supported but privateer hands from 2024 onwards.
Proton Competition sees a number change to #16 with their Porsche 911 RSR-19 with IMSA drivers Ryan Hardwick from the United States and Zacharie Robichon, the Canadian star, coming over to spearhead their effort. I wonder who driver three in that car will be. They are the only GT class team registered at Le Mans from the ranks of the IMSA WeatherTech Championship. AF Corse have two cars lined up, two Ferrari 488 GTE's. #21 will feature Stefano Constantini of Italy, Ulysse de Pauw of Belgium, (a standout GT3 racer), and Simon Mann from England. The sister AF Corse GTE Ferrari is #54, a long serving WEC entry for Thomas Flohr of Switzerland and Francesco Castellaci of Italy, with another Italian veteran, Davide Rigon serving as driver three. There is a third AF Corse 488 Ferrari in the form of car #83 for Richard Mille AF Corse, sponsored by the French watchmaker. Mille himself is a commissioner for the WEC.
#83 is to be driven by Lilou Wadoux of France, the French lady racer who has been gaining lots of experience in LMP2 but also is doing the same in GT machinery. Wadoux will team up with Argentinian Luis Perez Companc and with Italian Alessio Rovera who has run for the team in their LMP2 car as well, especially in European Le Mans Series competition in the very recent past. The AF Corse armada are formidable between the factory Ferrari Hypercars and their GTE efforts.
Coming next in GTE Am we have the first of a number of Aston Martin Vantage based entries, the #25 of Oman Racing, which features team principal and lead driver Ahmad Al Harthy who has myriad experience aboard Aston Martin's in endurance events trimmed in GTE and GT3 spec alike. Who will join Al Harthy at the wheel of this race car? We'll find out in due course as he is currently it's only listed driver. Corvette Racing are back at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but the script is totally flipped now. For years they ran as Pro entries and won tons of races here at Le Mans. Now, in the Am class, they have kept their familiar yellow livery but the C8.R is in the hands of American car dealer Ben Keating who has raced multiple events in WEC and IMSA over the years including here at Le Mans.
Keating is joined on the team by Dutchman Nicky Catsburg, a Corvette factory driver, and a new recruit to the team to fill the Am driver slot is Argetinian Nicolas Varrone. The all-Danish team GMB Motorsport are here for their first Le Mans start courtesy of their successes you have read about a lot so far in our coverage of the Le Mans Cup. Stepping up from GT3 they are set to campaign a GTE spec Aston Martin Vantage with the Danish trio of Gustav Birch, Kasper Jensen, and Jens Reno Moller. Project 1 and AO Racing have merged their operations for Le Mans this year.
We saw AO compete at the Rolex 24 at Daytona and undoubtedly, they will also run future IMSA races. This is the team of American drivers P.J. Hyett and Gunnar Jeanette (a Le Mans veteran), and Italian Matteo Cairoli who is a longtime Porsche campaigner at Le Mans and in the World Endurance Championship. Kessel Racing have a two-car lineup in GTE Am with Ferrari for 2023. The first is the traditional #57 entry that we have seen at Le Mans and in WEC for years. Japan's Takeshi Kimura is slated to team up in the car with American Scott Huffaker and Brazilian Daniel Serra. The team's second car is to run #74 and so far, Italian David Fumanelli is the only confirmed driver.
Another two-car effort from Iron Lynx for Ferrari, including Iron Lynx and Iron Dames. The #60 Iron Lynx car has Italian Claudio Schiavoni tabbed as lead driver and we shall see who else joins. Iron Dames will see the usual trio of Sarah Bovy, Michelle Gatting, and Rahel Frey. The British JMW team are once again entering a 488 GTE Ferrari. As of now, Frenchman Thomas Neubauer is the only confirmed driver for the entry. Who else will join? We'll find out as time goes on and we get closer to the race in June. TF Sport Aston Martin, led by team boss Tom Ferrier, once again has a single Aston Martin Vantage entry.
TF Sport will carry #72 on the car for an all-French trio including Valentin Haase-Clot, as well as Arnold and Maxime Robin. Proton Competition have a three-car Porsche team in the GTE Am class including the entry they run with actor and team boss as well as former driver, Patrick Dempsey, he himself a Le Mans class winner in 2019. Christian Ried, the Le Mans veteran is the only confirmed driver aboard the #77 Porsche 911 RSR-19 at this stage and we shall see who joins him. Gianmaria Bruni, the Italian former factory Porsche GT driver, he is in the second car and like Ried, will have two more co-drivers. We'll see about that announcement.
Irish actor and racing driver, Michael Fassbender is the lead driver in the third Proton Competition entry, car #911 in reference to the Porsche 911 model. As he does in the European Le Mans Series, he shall team with Austrian Porsche GT ace, Richard Lietz, and we shall find out who their third driver will be in due time. Aston Martin will be further represented in GTE Am competition by the teams from Northwest AMR, and D'station Racing. Canadian Paul Dalla Lana is a constant in the FIA WEC and at Le Mans and we shall see who he will be partnered by for the race in due time as they are also a season-long entrant. Britain's GR Racing have campaigned their Porsche 911 RSR-19 over a number of seasons in WEC.
England's Mike Wainwright so far is the only registered driver in the car, and we shall see if other drivers he has shared with in recent years will also be a part of the team. D'station Racing have been a constant campaigner in WEC and at Le Mans for many years now and will do so once more with an Aston Martin Vantage, one of many in the field. The Japanese team once again entrusting the services of British driver Charlie Fagg who has an Aston Martin connection along with Japanese amateur drivers Tomonobu Fujii and Satoshi Hoshino.
The final confirmed entrant this year is a fascinating automobile that we have already talked about. Car #24. This is the experimental Garage 56 NASCAR Next Generation, Generation Seven Cup Series Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 that we have seen numerous testing videos and an overall presentation for already with it's massive 5.8-liter V8 engine rivaling such prototypes as the Cadillac's for sheer grunt and thunder down the Mulsanne straight. Highlighted have been the attributes to turn the NASCAR Next Gen Cup car into an endurance racer. Hendrick Motorsports will campaign the car with their all-star trio of Jenson Button (former Formula 1 champion and 15-time Grand Prix winner), seven-time NASCAR Cup Champion Jimmie Johnson, and Mike Rockenfeller, a driver who has won Le Mans and Daytona alike.
There you have it! The highlighted entry list with every major player for the 24 Hours of Le Mans! We shall get to a list of reserve cars in due time, cars that will slot in should any of the main competitors on the initial list have to withdraw. We hope that does not happen, but in many cases at Le Mans, there can be instances of places shifting around, and we'll keep you fully informed of what happens in the months leading up to the centenary race come June. Thanks for joining us. So long, and au revoir, for now, everybody. Take care.
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