OK. It is time for a deep dive into the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship entry list to see who is where and who (drivers) and what (teams and cars) will be in competition next year. If you're ready, I'm ready. Let's go. 37 cars will be on the list, almost roughly evenly split between Hypercar and LMGT3 with the removal of LMP2 from the championship as a whole, save for spots that will be granted to them on the grid at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June. There are 19 Hypercars, a massive seasonlong entry! It makes me wonder if any of the IMSA GTP teams may even be granted guest entries for the 24 Hours of Le Mans or not. Again, that is another story for another day. We won't know about the Le Mans entries until at least February. So, as the comedy show's title says, curb your enthusiasm, ladies and gentlemen, for now.
Cadillac Racing will be back with the #2 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V Series R for their second season. This is a team that showed consistency throughout 2023. 2/3rds of their 2023 lineup will be back with Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber. Richard Westbrook has departed the team. We don't yet know who their third driver will be in the blue Cadillac. Watch this space. Will they be joined by the other Cadillac's for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, their sister Ganassi Racing Cadillac racing in IMSA, or, the bright red Action Express Cadillac, for the 24 Hours of Le Mans? That we don't know yet and that is up to the brass at Cadillac to decide. Again, watch this space for what the Le Mans entry list will look like in February.
Vanwall, are gone. Like their fellow nonhybrid Hypercar team, Glickenhaus, the Vanwall team decided that their non hybrid Hypercar, the Vanwall Vandervell 680, was not competitive at all against the hybrid propelled factory Hypercars. So, they will not be back. Porsche Penske Motorsports are back with two factory Porsche 963's with an altered driver lineup. Dane Cameron is no longer in the fold in WEC. Does this mean he has switched to the Porsche Penske Motorsports IMSA GTP lineup? Or does this mean he is no longer part of the factory Porsche team altogether? Again, this is something that is developing, and we'll see what the outcome is.
Currently, the Porsche Penske driver lineup has Matt Campbell, the Australian, moving over to the WEC effort from the IMSA team. I have my doubts Campbell will be pulling double duty on both sides of the Atlantic save for the Rolex 24 because there are a handful of clashing weekends between the WEC and the IMSA WeatherTech Championship in 2024, although one of them does not involve the Hypercars/GTP cars. Campbell will join the existing team of Michael Christensen and Fred Makowiecki aboard the #5 PPM Porsche 963. The sister #6 car has a carryover lineup from 2023. Laurens Vanthoor, Andre Lotterer, and Kevin Estre will be the drivers.
At Toyota, there is one major change. Jose Maria Lopez has left the factory Toyota team and will now move over to their sister brand at Lexus to race in the GT3 class with the Lexus RC F GT3. Read on in this post to find out more about that when we dig into the GT3 class. His slot will be filled in the #7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid by former LMP2 racer and Formula 1 race starter, Dutchman Nyck De Vries, who has been on Toyota's Hypercar books for a wee while now, as a test driver. He will move up to a full-season race seat. There are no changes in the #8 Toyota that has won championships and has won at Le Mans in the past. Brendon Hartley from New Zealand joins teammates Sebastien Buemi from Switzerland and Japan's Ryo Hirakawa once again in 2024.
The new Isotta Fraschini Hypercar, the Tipo 6 Competizione, will be a part of the championship in 2024. But the management of the team has completely changed, just in the last number of days as you read on Sportscar365. Vector Sport no longer have any skin in the game in the management role and the operation has been taken over by Duqueine Engineering, another team that found moderate success in LMP2. Now, they will step up the ladder into the Hypercar ranks to operate and manage Isotta Fraschini. Two thirds of the driver lineup have been confirmed. Mexico's Alejandro Garcia will join Frenchman Jean Karl Vernay with a third driver yet to be confirmed.
Hertz Team Jota will run two cars in the championship, two customer Porsche 963's after splitting their effort in 2023 between a single Porsche 963 and an Oreca 07 LMP2 car. But they are stepping up to the big leagues in 2024. The usual #38, their famed number, will be back with Danish driver Oliver Rasmussen stepping up to Hypercar from LMP2 as we await the announcement of two more drivers to join him. They have a second car, car #12 entering next year. Will Stevens moves up from LMP2 and back into topflight prototype racing as the lead driver there, again, awaiting on two other co-drivers to be signed up. Jota Sport have already shown their competitiveness and that will grow as they have this two-car effort in Hypercar for 2024.
BMW reenters the top prototype category after a quarter century when they won with Williams Grand Prix Engineering and the fabled Schnitzer team led by the late, great Charlie Lamm and their former boss, former Formula 1 driver, Gerhard Berger, at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans with the fabulous BMW V12 LMR LMP open cockpit V12 prototype. This time, their effort will be spearheaded by WRT who have recently moved over to the BMW fold in GT3 racing and are now tackling Hypercar with the BMW M Hybrid V8, a car we have seen compete in IMSA in 2023. WRT will run two cars. So far, first drivers in each of them have been confirmed. The cars will be numbered #15 and #20.
Belgian Dries Vanthoor and South African Sheldon van der Linde are the two confirmed BMW factory drivers who will spearhead each driver trio. We shall see who else will join the team but I have doubts about drivers that ran for WRT under bosses Vincent Vosse, Yves Weerts, and Thierry Tassin, in LMP2, being a part of the BMW Hypercar effort. Could former MotoGP motorcycle king Valentino Rossi, who has taken the world of GT3 racing with WRT and BMW by storm, be in the frame for a race seat? We'll have to wait and find out.
Alpine are ready for their Hypercar debut with the new Alpine A424B (Beta) chassis, to be powered by the venerable 3.4-liter turbo V6 motor that has been in use in Formula 3 and Formula 2 open wheel racing cars for some years now. The fabled French boutique sports car manufacturer who raced in the 1960s and are racing again now in Formula 1, are set to field an LMDh spec Hypercar for the first time after having a grandfathered LMP1 car at first and then stepping back to LMP2 in 2023 awaiting the arrival of the new Hypercar of theirs built in house. Thus far, veteran French drivers Matthieu Vaxiviere and Nicolas Lapierre, who have been on Alpine's books for a long time, are the confirmed lead drivers. Watch this space to find out who will join them in the #35 and #36 cars respectively.
Ferrari - AF Corse, once again, will have two factory 499P's entered in the championship. The defending champions from this year's centenary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans have three cars ready to go instead of two. Currently, lead drivers have been confirmed for each one, but we don't yet know who their co-drivers will be. #50 is led by Antonio Fuoco of Italy, Alessandro Pier Guidi (one of the winners of this year's Le Mans) spearheads the #51, and the new third entry is the #83 car and that will have Polish ex Formula 1 and LMP2 driver Robert Kubica as the lead driver. Stay tuned to find out who else will drive for The Prancing Horse as they look to 2024 and defense of their Le Mans title.
Lamborghini will finally debut their new SC63 Le Mans Hypercar at the 2024 WEC season opener in Qatar and as we know, their IMSA Endurance Cup program has been delayed and will begin at the 12 Hours of Sebring due to take place after the WEC season begins by a couple of weeks. On the Iron Lynx Lamborghini World Endurance team, Italian Lamborghini factory ace Mirko Bortolotti is listed as the lead driver. Lamborghini has a massive talent pool, like Ferrari and Porsche, and we'll see who else will be chosen to partner Bortolotti in their single factory car for next year. The drivers have been announced for their IMSA effort but not their WEC effort yet and we'll see how the puzzle fits together at The Raging Bull, from Bologna.
It will be interesting to see how Maranello's Prancing Horse of Ferrari and Bologna's Raging Bull at Lamborghini, will do, competing against each other. There was a rivalry between Enzo Ferrari and Ferrucio Lamborghini, the founder of Lamborghini Automobili, who began making his fortune by building tractors. That will continue, although Lamborghini's foray into motor racing has been much more recent. For most of their existence they focused exclusively on production sports cars with one ill-fated V12 engine supply deal in Formula 1 in the early 1990s that was not at all successful. Their sports car racing efforts have been bearing much fruit in the span of over a decade recently.
Peugeot are back for their second full season in World Endurance with their awesome and bizarre Peugeot 9X8 Hypercar, which, according to regulations, may now have to run with a rear wing, something that it has never done before to this point in the car's existence since debuting in the 2022 Monza race. Scotsman Paul Di Resta and Frenchman Loic Duval both return to the team. It remains to be seen who will join them aboard the #93 and #94 9X8's in 2024. Stay tuned. Completing the Hypercar field for the full season is the third of the privateer Porsche 963's, and the fifth overall Porsche 963 in the field.
This is the #99 Proton Competition car and so far, Harry Tincknell will be the top driver in that team dovetailing their efforts of also racing a Ford Mustang GT3 in the GT3 class. We will get to GT3 in a moment. In fact, come with me through another door, and now, we cross over to the other end of the room, to find the GT3 field after discovering the Hypercars. A reminder, before we begin, and that is the LMP2 cars no longer take full part in WEC because of the explosion of Hypercar and GT3 entries. We will see LMP2 in the Asian and European Le Mans Series and in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship, as well as at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. However, they are no longer a part of the overall World Endurance Championship.
Aston Martin will be back in GT racing with the new GT3 format for FIA WEC. They were a fixture as a Pro and Am factory and semi-works team in the GTE era. There will be two Aston Martin Vantage's in the LMGT3 field. One for The Heart of Racing and another for D'station Racing. Heart of Racing will carry #27 on their car. American domiciled Englishman Ian James, the team principal and lead driver at The Heart of Racing, is so far, the only confirmed driver. Of course, Aston Martin are also preparing to enter the Hypercar fold with their Valkyrie in 2025. So, this will be a carryover year as they continue their GT3 program. The second Aston Martin program remains with D'station from Japan. They have run in the past with a trio of Japanese Am drivers in the old GTE Am category. Thus far, Marco Sorensen, the Danish Aston factory ace, is the only confirmed driver at D'station. We'll see who joins him, later on.
In GT3 there are customer cars. No factory teams are allowed. The factories are meant to support customer efforts. We will see the same thing in the FIA WEC and ACO rules racing that we have been witnessing for a number of years now in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship and in SRO GT3 racing worldwide. Team WRT will have two V6 turbo powered BMW M4 GT3's in addition to their two M Hybrid V8 Hypercars. Thus far cars #31 and #46 have two confirmed drivers. Augusto Farfus, the Brazilian, will lead the #31 team and we'll see who joins him. Valentino Rossi, the motorcycle racing world champion, the king of MotoGP, will spearhead the sister #46 car which is the number Rossi used on motorcycles for his entire career and now in his foray into sports car racing as a BMW factory driver.
Vista AF Corse, stalwarts of the GTE category on the Pro and Am levels, and operators of the 499P Ferrari Hypercar program, will continue their involvement in WEC into the GT3 era with two V6 turbo powered Ferrari 296 GT3's. Their driver lineups remain unchanged and carry over from their GTE successes. Car #54 is led by Swiss gentleman driver Thomas Flohr, sharing with his longtime Italian co-drivers, Francesco Castellaci and Davide Rigon. The sister #55 Ferrari 296 GT3 for AF Corse has Simon Mann and Frenchman Francois Heriau (former LMP2 racer) being joined by one-season LMP2 pilot and GT racing veteran, Italian Alessio Rovera.
Former LMP2 stalwarts United Autosport, they will continue in LMP2 across the pond in America in IMSA. But, for WEC, they become the de facto McLaren team since team boss Zak Brown is also the team boss of the McLaren Formula 1 and IndyCar efforts. They are set to run two McLaren 720S GT3 Evo's, and the lead drivers (with the other two yet to be confirmed in each car) are former open wheel racer (in Formula 3 competition I believe), Frenchman, Gregoire Saucy. Watch this space for an update on a third driver. Saucy is not confirmed on the WEC entry list, but Marino Sato of Japan, is. Sato (no relation to former F1 driver and Indianapolis 500 winner, Takuma Sato), will lead the second McLaren 720S GT3 for United Autosport. Sato ran in the 2023 European Le Mans Series and before that, he raced in open wheel competition in FIA Formula 3, on the Formula 1 ladder. Iron Lynx and Iron Dames enter GT3 and move from Porsche to Lamborghini. They have, (to be fair) competed with Lamborghini's in SRO competition and in the endurance races in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship.
But since they are now all-in with Lamborghini with the new Hypercar effort, they are also campaigning a pair of Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2's in the GT3 class in FIA World Endurance, too. Iron Lynx team boss Claudio Schiavoni, the Italian Am driver, he is the only confirmed driver on the #60 entry thus far, and we'll see who will join him. As for the Iron Dames, Michelle Gatting is the only confirmed driver and we'll see who joins her. This season of course she raced alongside Rahel Frey and Sarah Bovy. I have to wonder if they will team up again at Lamborghini next year and if so, will they be in WEC and IMSA, both? Or will they just be in WEC? They are very likely on Lamborghini's books.
TF Sport under team principal Tom Ferrier have been stalwart Aston Martin campaigners for years throughout the GTE era and have also had a go of it in LMP2. Now, they switch brands and are in the GM and Corvette umbrella with the new GT3 customer Corvette program coming online. TF Sport will campaign two Corvette Z06 GT3.R's. As was announced here a wee while ago, their lead drivers in each car have been confirmed. In car #81, the first of the two Corvette's, is Irishman Charlie Eastwood, who has been with TF Sport for a long time. Former Mercedes driver Daniel Juncadella, the Spaniard, will be the lead driver in the #82 car.
We'll see who joins Eastwood and Juncadella at TF Sport with their new effort with the Chevrolet bowtie. Not to be outdone, it will be a battle of the American muscle cars along with the best Europe has to offer as Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, have now joined the party with their new GT3 spec Ford Mustang. A car that is returning to the endurance racing fold for the first time in a long while. Ford are managed by Multimatic in Canada, and they are building the GT3 Mustang's after also successfully spearheading the old Ford GT, for their GT Le Mans factory program a number of years ago.
Proton Competition, along with their privateer Porsche Hypercar, will be the main Ford Mustang outfit in WEC LMGT3. Cars #77 and #88 will once again be entered by the German team who are former Porsche campaigners. Currently, American GT racing ace Ryan Hardwick will lead the #77 crew and in the #88 the lead driver is set to be Englishman Ben Barker. Both of them are coming over from the Porsche customer fold. Speaking of Porsche, we have seen their Hypercar efforts with Penske, Jota Sport, and Proton. In LMGT3, the Porsche 911 GT3R (992) will be represented by two cars from stalwart Porsche affiliate Manthey Racing under the EMA banner from Germany and the Pure Rxcing (Pure Racing) banners, from Lithuania.
Manthey will partially run both cars along with the aforementioned teams. Longtime Porsche GT campaigner Richard Lietz, a former factory driver, from Germany, will be the lead driver aboard car #91. We await to find out who his teammates will be. The #92 car has Aleksandr Malykhin as the lead driver. the British domiciled driver originally from Russia. He is set to team up with Austrian Porsche GT veteran Klaus Bachler and German Porsche racer, Joel Sturm. Lexus will give Toyota representation in Hypercar and now in LMGT3. This is per that strange rule I discussed in another recent editorial. Refer to my editorial entitled "Utterly Ridiculous".
French team Akkodis ASP moves over from SRO GT World Challenge Europe where they raced with Mercedes Benz for a number of years, very successfully. Now, the team, led by French former driver Jerome Policand, is bringing Lexus to the WEC with a pair of older but still competitive Lexus RC F GT3 cars. Vasser Sullivan have been campaigning the Lexus RC F GT3's stateside in the IMSA WeatherTech Championship now for a number of years and there have been RC F GT3's formerly running in SRO GT World Challenge Europe, and concurrently, in SRO GT World Challenge Asia.
Akkodis ASP have signed former Audi driver, and brother of Sheldon van der Linde racing for BMW in Hypercar, Kelvin van der Linde, to their team. The South African remains in the GT3 fold. Kelvin van der Linde will spearhead car #78 and we await to find out who his co-drivers will be. Likewise, the sister #87 Akkodis ASP Lexus, that automobile is being led by now former Toyota Hypercar driver, Jose Maria Lopez. This announcement was just made recently. Toyota are bringing Lopez, an overall winner at the 2021 24 Hours of Le Mans, into the Lexus fold in GT3. Who else will we see in these cars? I have my doubts that drivers currently signed on with the American Vasser Sullivan team in IMSA will be shifted away from that program and moved to the Akkodis ASP WEC effort. The 2024 FIA WEC team and driver puzzle is pretty well put together. When the other pieces fall into place before the season opens in Qatar the first weekend in March, we shall let you know what the situation is. For now, so long everyone. Take care.
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