It may as well be Christmas as far as I am concerned! The 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans entry list has been released! You have seen the news and you have also seen video analyzing the whole list from fellow sports car racing fans who cover the sport on video such as Formula Jonah and Ewan Wane. Here is my take, my editorial report on the entry list and what it looks like.
There will be three classes this year. Hypercar, LMP2, and LMGT3. GT3 cars will be brand new to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, competing at Circuit de la Sarthe for the first time ever. We are highly familiar with GT3 on a global level. Think about it. They compete worldwide in every major sports car championship you can think of from IMSA, to ACO, to SRO, to Nurburgring Langstrecken Series, to Creventic 24 Hour Series. You name a championship, GT3 cars will likely be a part of it. But this is true only now for the 24 Hours of Le Mans since the old GT Endurance class with factory hotrod production cars, has outlived it's usefulness and has been thoroughly supplanted by the Hypercars.
Speaking of Hypercars, oh my gosh! Diehard sports car racing fans will be giddy butterflies about this! There are nearly two dozen Hypercars entered at Le Mans this year! 23 of them! Sounds like a great place to start. Let's get into it! It ought to be noted, every single Hypercar at Le Mans this year is hybrid powered. There is no room anymore for a regular Hypercar without hybrid boost. Not so much for the supposed environmental impact, which is negligible, but rather, because hybrid boost allows every brand to bring some more power. Hybrid boost = horsepower. That is the name of the game here. We start, with Cadillac. Cadillac had a very successful reintroduction at Le Mans last year, and the same teams that raced for the flagship General Motors brand are back in 2024 for more success!
Chip Ganassi Racing fields two cars. One blue Cadillac, the #2 car, for Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn, and IndyCar champion Alex Palou, and one lemony yellow Cadillac for Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande, and multiple IndyCar champion, Scott Dixon. The third Cadillac in the race, is the venerable red Whelen Engineering Cadillac V Series.R, car #311, for Whelen Cadillac Racing and my friends at Action Express Racing under team boss Bob Johnson. They have earned their second Le Mans invitation in a row on the back of winning the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship overall and in the GTP class. Pipo Derani and Jack Aitken will spearhead the driver lineup and it is expected they will be joined by endurance race teammate in IMSA, Tom Blomqvist, for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Porsche Penske Motorsport, winners already this year at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, have three cars entered at Le Mans just as they did last year, three factory Porsche 963's. The #4 car has Matthieu Jaminet, the Frenchman, as the only confirmed driver so far. Stay tuned to see who will join him. The two full-time Porsche 963's for Penske in the WEC are again, the #5 and #6 cars. Matt Campbell moves to the full-time WEC entry this year, one of them. He will spearhead the #5 car will the Aussie who has just won both at Daytona in IMSA and at Bathurst in SRO GT3 in the Intercontinental GT Challenge. Joining him will be the existing drivers in the #5, Dane Michael Christensen, and Frenchman, Fred Makowiecki.
The sister #6 car has an unchanged lineup at Porsche Penske Motorsports. For the second year in a row, it will be Frenchman Kevin Estre teaming up with Belgian Laurens Vanthoor, and German Andre Lotterer, a former Le Mans winner for Audi. Talking of Porsche, they have three privateer cars entered as well as the three factory Penske cars. Again, Porsche is the only brand in Hypercar to support and provide customer cars at the very same level as the factory machinery. Hertz Team Jota, just as they are for the entire 2024 WEC season, have stepped up and are fielding two customer Porsche 963's. #12 for Will Stevens, Norman Nato, and Callum Ilott, and #38 for Oliver Rasmussen, Phil Hanson, and 2009 Formula 1 World Champion Jenson Button.
Proton Competition have two more Porsche 963's and oddly, one of them is the only Hypercar on the list of reserve entries which we will get to as you continue reading this post. The other main entry for them is the #99 car which is set to be driven by Swiss Porsche veteran Neel Jani, Harry Tincknell from England, and Frenchman Julien Andlauer, moving up from the GT ranks into the Hypercar class this year. BMW are back at Le Mans this year, for the first time since 2018, and for the first time in the top prototype category since their win here in 1999 with the all-conquering V12 LMR LMP roadster that won in the hands with Joachim Winkelhock, Pierluigi Martini, and Yannick Dalmas. The BMW M Hybrid V8 comes to Le Mans.
But it is not in the hands of the America squad that runs in IMSA. This is not a BMW Team Rahal Letterman Lanigan entrant with the M Hybrid V8 and its 4-liter turbo V8 engine. This is the Belgian BMW juggernaut Team WRT under team bosses Yves Weerts, Pierre Dieudonne, and Vincent Vosse, running two M Hybrid V8's. Car #15, to pay homage to the 1999 winner, to be driven by Belgian Dries Vanthoor, Swiss licensed Italian Raffaele Marciello, and Germany's Marco Wittmann, and car #20 to be piloted by South African Sheldon van der Linde, Dutchman Robin Frijns, and German BMW racer, Rene Rast.
Isotta Fraschini come to Le Mans for the first time ever. This Italian brand is a revival of a grand name that built sports and touring cars in the 1930s. The firm was founded in Bari, Italy, in 1900 by Cesare Isotta and Vincenzo Fraschini. They built cars between 1901 and 1949 and resumed with limited edition production cars in the late 1940s and in 1996 and are building their first race car since 1905. The Tipo 6 C is their Le Mans Hypercar, to be powered by their own 3-liter turbocharged V6 engine. Driving the car at the 24 Hours of Le Mans will be Thai driver Carl Wattana Bennett, Jean Karl Vernay of France, and Canadian driver Antonio Seravalle.
We are not done speaking about Italian cars racing at Le Mans. Oh no. Isotta Fraschini is far from the only Italian Hypercar on the grid! Lamborghini will be appearing for the first time at Le Mans in many years and for the first time in the top category to race head-to-head with their longtime Italian rivals and defending race winners, Ferrari. Before we scratch the surface of what is going on at Maranello, we must first turn our attention to Bologna and the raging bulls. Lamborghini and Iron Lynx will be running two Lamborghini SC63 LMDh Hypercars at Le Mans this year and will debut the cars coming up in the FIA WEC season opener in Qatar in a couple of weeks and at the IMSA 12 Hours of Sebring in mid-March for round two of the WeatherTech Championship.
The first Lamborghini Iron Lynx SC63 is the #19 car, one of the firm's two traditional numbers to designate the year of their founding when Feruccio Lamborghini made a solemn vow to make cars that were better than Ferrari. Frenchman Romain Grosjean, a former Formula 1 and IndyCar driver, he spearheads Lamborghini's prototype effort in the #19 car. Grosjean will be joined in the #19 entry by Italian Lamborghini factory drivers Andrea Caldarelli and Matteo Cairoli, who moves to the Raging Bull after many years at Porsche. The second SC63 with the #63 on it, the second half of the company's founding year, has regular Mirko Bortolotti as lead driver. He is joined by ex-Formula 1 driver, Daniil Kvyat from Russia, and veteran sports and touring car driver, Italian, Edoardo Mortara.
Alpine are back, joining Peugeot as another French manufacturer on the grid. Alpine are the performance arm of Renault, and they are hoping to reclaim glory they once held here at Le Mans in addition to their Formula 1 efforts. Alpine won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, 46 years ago, in 1978, with the A442 open cockpit prototype in the hands of two French racing legends, Jean Pierre Jassaud, and Didier Pironi, who went on to race in Formula 1 for Ferrari. Alpine Endurance Team lines up two of their new Mecachrome turbo V6 powered A424 Beta LMDh Hypercars on the grid this year. They are using a heavily modified version of the 3.4-liter V6 used as a spec engine in the FIA Formula 2 championship that is turbocharged for applications in endurance racing.
To try and replicate their 1978 triumph, Alpine have enlisted for their two-car team, mostly French drivers, naturally. That said, they have a depth of talent in the organization for their first shot at the top class in WEC in a few years when they last entered with what was a grandfathered LMP1 race car. The #35 Alpine A424 has Paul-Loup Chatin and Charles Milesi, two of the French drivers who have been in their LMP2 program previously, joined by literal Austrian royalty, Prince Ferdinand Habsburg, also stepping up this year, from LMP2 into the Hypercar class.
The sister #36 Alpine A424 has Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere carrying over from their previous efforts in LMP1 and LMP2 and they will be joined by ex-Formula 1 racer, and son of the seven-time Formula 1 World Champion, Michael Schumacher, Mick Schumacher of Germany, at the wheel of the second car. Defending 24 Hours of Le Mans winners, Ferrari, are eagerly back to defend their crown from last year, and this time, they have stepped up their efforts from two cars, to three, with their 499P with its 3-liter turbocharged V6 engine and hybrid drive.
The #50 and #51 499P's carry over with the same driver lineups from a year ago. Antono Fuoco, the Italian, spearheads car #50 and is joined by Dane Nicklas Nielsen, and Spaniard Miguel Molina, while the defending champions of Le Mans also return, the #51 499P of Britain's James Calado, and Italian's Alessandro Pier Guidi, and Antonio Giovinazzi, looking to go back to back at Le Mans, something that has not been done by the same driving team since Toyota accomplished the feat in both 2018 and 2019 with Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi, and Kazuki Nakajima.
There is a third Ferrari 499P, car #83, just listed under AF Corse. This third bullet in Ferrari's arsenal, will be driven by Polish former Formula 1 and rally driver Robert Kubica, Ferrari Formula 1 test driver and GT3 ace Robert Shwartzman from Israel, and Chinese racer Yifei Ye who jumps ship from Porsche to Ferrari and has landed in their third Hypercar. This leaves one more Hypercar team to talk about, another French outfit, Peugeot, with their 9X8 which according to reports, may not remain wingless much longer. Peugeot are going for their fourth triumph at their home race at Le Mans after winning with the all-conquering 905 Evo Group C V10 monster in 1992 and '93 and with the equally fearsome diesel powered 908 HDI FAP in 2009.
So far, they have two drivers confirmed in each of the 9X8's. Lead drivers Jean Eric Vergne in the #93 and Stoffel Vandoorne in #94, the Frenchman and the Belgian, they will return to the team. For their co-drivers for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, watch this space. Peugeot was competing with some well-known prototype drivers last year and I wonder if the folks I have been thinking about, have been retained on their books for this year. It is clear, one of their drivers from a year ago, Gustavo Menezes, the American racer, will not be back racing for The Lion. The other Peugeot drivers are to be announced later on. Coming up is the next chapter in the book now that we have covered all the Hypercars. 23 of them! That was a ton! LMP2 has depth and quality as well, with a total of 16 cars, all of them the same Oreca 07 chassis with the same Gibson Technologies British manufactured 4.2-liter atmospheric V8 engine as has been customary in the class for close to a decade now.
Proton Competition, longtime GT and recent prototype contender, they start the list off in LMP2 with the #9 car. As the entry list has gone to print, Jonas Ried, son of Proton Competition team boss Christian Ried, the German, is the only confirmed driver. 2/3rds of their driver lineup from last year's centenary running of Le Mans are back with the team including Frenchman Gabriel Aubry and Irishman Ryan Cullen. The new recruit for this year will be Monegasque driver Stephane Richelmi who was working most recently as I recall, with the H24 hydrogen powered prototype project which, I think, at this stage of the game, has been shelved temporarily.
AO Racing by TF Sport will carry the #14. I wonder if this is their same "Spike" the dragon livery they have been running with in IMSA so far this year along with "Rexy" the dinosaur which has adorned their Porsche GT cars in the recent past. We'll find out soon enough. Team boss at AO Racing P.J. Hyett is the lead driver, and he will be joined by Swiss ace Louis Deletraz. A third driver is yet to be named. As is customary, United Autosports will run two cars, one under their USA outfit and one under their global operation in LMP2. Filipe Albuquerque, the Portuguese veteran, is their one confirmed driver in the #22 while the Pro-Am USA entry #23 will feature American racer Ben Keating, who has intentions of racing prototypes for the foreseeable future, along with Chilean sports car standout Nico Pino, and England's Ben Hanley.
Spanish LMP2 racer Albert Costa, he won the class in LMP2 at Le Mans last year and has switched teams. He is set to be the lead driver for Nielsen Racing aboard their #24 Oreca. Who will his co-drivers be? We'll find out. Algarve Pro Racing has two new drivers to the fold in their stable, who have been competitive in the LMP2 class in the recent past. Lichtenstein's Matthias Kaiser and Britain's Olli Caldwell are 2/3rds of the lineup, and the third driver has yet to be decided. IDEC Sport are back with their #28 Oreca. 2/3rds of the driver's strength is French with Reshad de Gerus and Paul Lafargue, and they are joined by rapid Dutchman (especially at the wheel of an LMP2), Job van Uitert.
Duqueine Team under team boss Gilles Duqueine, who just happens to be a racer who has a disability, (all for motorsports being accessible for everyone who has the skills), has two thirds of their driver team figured out. Aussie LMP2 standout James Allen is being joined by former GT3 racer Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer, and we'll see who the third piece of the puzzle will be. DKR Engineering will be back at Le Mans this year for the second time presumably with their car that is painted up like Nemo, the famed animated clownfish from the Disney movies. So far, one driver is on their books for Le Mans, Germany's Alexander Matschull.
We'll find out who else will join DKR soon. Inter Europol Competition are back, the racing bakers, who had a thrilling LMP2 victory last year at Le Mans as we said, but this year, they will have a revised driver lineup. Jakub Smiechowski is back with the team, the Polish driver whose father has an interest in their bakery, Inter Europol is a Polish commercial bakery. Tom Dillmann will join the team in 2024 at Le Mans. Dillman, most recently drove for the now defunct Vanwall Vandervell 680 non hybrid Le Mans Hypercar program that was so beleaguered with performance and mechanical setbacks throughout the 2023 WEC season. Stay tuned to find out who the third Inter Europol driver is.
Cool Racing are back with two cars in LMP2. #37 and #47. They have wholesale driver changes on their team for the 2024 race especially since LMP2 will only feature at Le Mans this year. Car #37 features Spaniard Lorenzo Fluxa alongside Danish LMP2 veteran Malthe Jakobsen, and Japan's Ritomo Miyata rounds out their lineup in the first entry. Miyata, we have seen him in GT3 cars and I think he is also competing in open wheel racing, possibly in Super Formula in Japan and in Super GT to the best of my knowledge, even though I don't regularly follow Super GT here on the blog.
Englishman Matt Bell is slated to drive the sister #47 Cool Racing Oreca alongside American LMP3 and LMP2 racer Naveen Rao, and another name I have not heard much recently, who is a new recruit, Fredrik Vesti, from Denmark. George Kurtz and Colin Braun will once again spearhead CrowdStrike by APR's Le Mans effort and we'll see who their third driver is. They had two drivers at the Rolex 24 at Daytona on their team, along with Kurtz and Braun. Malthe Jakobsen is aligned with Cool Racing in WEC. So, I would bet they put Toby Sowery in as a possible candidate for the third drive although Sowery also ran with a different team during the Asian Le Mans Series campaign.
Panis Racing are back for another shot at Le Mans in LMP2 with their #65 entry. So far it is Venezuelan driver Manuel Maldonado, the only confirmed pilot of the car, the brother of former Formula 1 Grand Prix racer, Pastor Maldonado. AF Corse change their number, to triple digits, and will be car #183 in LMP2 at Le Mans this time. 2/3rds of the 2023 driver lineup is intact. Ben Barnicoat from England sharing with Frenchman Francois Perrodo, and they are joined by Argentinian Nico Varrone who was part of Corvette's triumph in the swansong for GTE class cars at Le Mans in the centenary running last year.
Speaking of GT cars, that is our third and final chapter, as the GT3 cars make their debut at Le Mans and of course, there is that ridiculous rule, that I have already heavily critiqued in an editorial before, about only current Hypercar brands having places for their GT3 cars on the grid at Le Mans, which makes no sense whatsoever. Anyhow, beyond that, it is a solid, strong field as GT3 makes their Le Mans debut and debuts in the FIA WEC. Aston Martin have two cars, two of their Vantage AMR LMGT3's, with the 4-liter turbocharged V8 engines, entered. One for American team The Heart of Racing, who it should be said, is also set to spearhead the Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar project when that finally comes online in 2025 (as we have spoken of here before), and another for D'Station Racing from Japan.
American domiciled Englishman Ian James leads The Heart of Racing effort in a similar lineup to the one they had last year after taking over the Northwest AMR team, alongside Italian Daniel Mancinelli, and Spaniard Alex Riberas. At D'station in the #777 car, 2/3rds of their lineup remains the same with longtime Japanese privateer racer Satoshi Hoshino and Danish Aston Martin GTE and GT3 veteran Marco Sorensen, joined this year, by the Frenchman Erwan Bastard, who has been a standout for the last couple of years in both GT3 and GT4 equipment.
BMW and WRT not only have two Hypercars, but they also have two LMGT3 BMW M4 GT3's entered at the Le Mans 24 Hours this year as well, again, under the auspices of Vincent Vosse and company. British GT star Darren Leung spearheads the two-car team alongside Indonesian LMP2 standout for WRT in the past, Sean Gelael, and Brazilian BMW factory driver Augusto Farfus who has done racing for both their prototype and GT programs for a number of years. In the second M4 GT3, the #46 Omani driver Ahmad Al Harthy joins the team after years of racing in GTE for the aforementioned rival from England, Aston Martin, and he is moving to BMW to partner a couple of standouts who have just recently become a part of the fold.
Al Harthy will team up with MotoGP legend Valentino "The Doctor" Rossi who is adjusting to his role as a car racer with aplomb and with vigor, and his new teammate, newly minted BMW factory driver, the Swiss domiciled Italian, Raffaele Marciello. BMW Team WRT will have a massive presence equally in Hypercar and in LMGT3. With the new regulations, Ferrari will have a large presence in the GT3 category with its new 296 GT3 model entering its second year of competition globally. The 296 GT3 is really a GT car designed like a prototype and it shares the same engine as the 499P Hypercar, the twin turbocharged F163 3-liter V6 motor.
Vista AF Corse have two cars. One for Switzerland's Thomas Flohr sharing with his longtime Italian teammates Francesco Castellaci and Davide Rigon. The other for American Simon Mann, Frenchman Francois Heriau (who is a former LMP2 racer moving over to GT3), and Italian Alessio Rovera, a longtime racer of production-based Ferrari sports cars who also had a spell last year in LMP2. There are three more single car Ferrari teams running the 296 GT3. One car apiece for JMW Motorsport with car #66, currently with one driver (Italian, Giacomo Petrobelli), on their driver's list. We'll see who partners Petrobelli in that car. Another single Ferrari 296 is to be campaigned by longtime contender in GTE competition, Spirit of Race.
Spirit of Race, the Swiss team who have always run Ferrari's in GT, are set to continue with a longstanding driver trio including Britain's Duncan Cameron, Ireland's Matt Griffin, and South African David Perel. Since there are rules against factory teams in LMGT3, Corvette Racing as well as Multimatic Mustang are ruled out and will stick with IMSA. But, American iron lovers, let not your heart be troubled, as there are privateer Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R's and Ford Mustang GT3's that will race at Le Mans. The Coyote V8 powered Mustang GT3's will be represented by two cars run by Proton Competition who also have a privateer Porsche 963 in Hypercar.
The #77 Ford Mustang GT3 has American Ryan Hardwick as lead driver sharing with Canadian ex-Porsche GT racer Zacharie Robichon, and British ex-Porsche GT racer Ben Barker. In the sister #88 Mustang GT3, there are three more ex-Porsche racers that have permanently jumped ship to join the Blue Oval. Italian Pro-Am racer Giorgio Roda is sharing with Norwegian Dennis Olsen, and Danish GT racer Mikkel Pedersen who like Roda, Barker, and Olsen, comes across from Stuttgart to Dearborn. There is a third Proton Competition Mustang GT3 as well. Along with cars #77 and #88, Proton Competition team boss Christian Ried is the lead driver in the #44 car. Who will join him? Ford and Multimatic, who seem to be staying stateside for the IMSA WeatherTech Championship, might contribute a few of their drivers to that effort, though it remains to be seen.
Corvette, like Ford, are now running customer cars per the GT3 rules that for the most part, prohibits factory teams. There are but two new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.Rs entered this year, by the venerable TF Sport effort from England under team boss Tom Ferrier whose initials adorn the team. Ferrier's team ran with Aston Martin in the past and are now racing under the bowtie. Their Corvettes are set to carry #81 and #82. They have an eclectic lineup of drivers as well. Three former LMP2 drivers are in the #81 car. Tom Van Rompuy of Belgium sharing with Angolan driver Rui Andrade, and Irishman Charlie Eastwood. While the #82 entry has newly minted Corvette driver Daniel Juncadella of Spain sharing with Frenchman Sebastien Baud (formerly a driver for Mercedes-AMG in a privateer effort in SRO competition in Europe), and Japan's Hiroshi Koizumi.
McLaren have two of their 720S GT3's entered for United Autosport, operated by McLaren Formula 1 team boss Zak Brown, hence the connection in sports car racing as well. This team has recently undergone some driver shifts even as the entry list officially went to print. Their first entry, car #59, I don't believe has undergone changes, but their second entry has. The #59 entry will have James Cottingham from England (recently a top driver for Mercedes in the British GT Championship), racing alongside Brazilian Nicolas Costa, and Swiss open wheel turned sports car driver, Gregoire Saucy. While, for #95, Japanese drivers Hiroshi Hamaguchi and Marino Sato make up 2/3rds of the McLaren lineup in car #95 after British racer Josh Caygill was odd manned out. The other McLaren entry belongs to a familiar team we have seen especially in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship. Inception Racing are going to Le Mans courtesy of American driver Brendon Iribe winning in GT Daytona at the Petit Le Mans last year and earning the Bob Akin Award.
Iribe will team up with his regular Inception Racing co-drivers, Danish driver Fredrik Schandorff, and Ollie Milroy from England. Toyota's luxury brand, Lexus, will be represented in the FIA WEC and at Le Mans for the first time, with their aging, but still competitive, Lexus RC F GT3 with it's 5-liter atmospheric V8 engine, by two cars being entered by longtime Mercedes-AMG campaigners in SRO, Akkodis ASP under the direction of team boss and former sports car driver, Frenchman, Jerome Policand. Car #78 will be shared by Russian racer Timur Boguslavskiy who has been with Akkodis ASP since their Mercedes-AMG days and is joined by former Audi GT3 driver Kelvin van der Linde from South Africa, and Frenchman Arnold Robin.
The sister #87 Akkodis ASP Lexus has GT veteran Takeshi Kimura as lead driver, joined by former Toyota Hypercar driver, now part of the Lexus GT3 effort, Argentinian driver Jose Maria Lopez, and Frenchman Esteban Masson, who began his FIA WEC GT career last year but is now I believe a full-time competitor. Germany's Manthey Racing is overseeing the Porsche GT3 effort with two separate teams set to run the new 992 GT3R version of the venerable 911 model. Manthey EMA oversees the #91 car to be driven by Australian GT3 standout Yasser Shahin as lead driver, sharing with Austrian Porsche GT veteran Richard Lietz (formerly of the factory team in the old GTE Pro class), and a driver I have not heard of until seeing his name on the entry, Dutchman Morris Schuring.
Manthey are also overseeing the operation for their #92 car of the Pure Racing team from Lithuania, strangely spelled with an X instead of an A. St. Kitts & Nevis domiciled Russian racer Alex Malykhin will lead the Pure Racing effort sharing with German Porsche GT3 regular Joel Sturm and Austrian Klaus Bachler. Last but not least in GT3 we have two Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2's on the grid, along with the brand's Hypercar efforts. These are the Iron Lynx and Iron Dames teams from Italy. Iron Lynx enlists the services of Lamborghini contracted driver Franck Perera of France, to join their duo who have been racing for the team through a few iterations and a few different car brands, Matteo Cressoni and team principal/lead driver Claudio Schiavoni.
Iron Dames, their all-female effort, who won the final LM GTE Am championship in WEC with Porsche in 2023, is back with the Raging Bull, in car #85. Belgian Sara Bovy and Danish racer Michelle Gatting, in 2024, are joined by Doriane Pin of France for the Iron Dames trio. This now leads us to the list of seven reserve entries that will be placeholders to fill in if any car in any class should drop off the entry list between now and the race in June. There is one Hypercar reserve, another Porsche 963 for Proton Competition, listed as car #79. Italian Porsche racer Gianmaria Bruni so far is the only listed driver on that one.
LMP2 has a total of three reserve entries, and here they are in numerical order. Car #29 is the Richard Mille by TDS Oreca 07 with 2/3rds of a possible driver lineup, including American Rodrigo Sales and Swiss LMP1 and LMP2 racer Mathias Beche listed, with an as yet unannounced third driver. Being a reserve, it will be on standby of course, as will the #41 American entered Staysail Motorsport Oreca. American GT3 turned LMP2 driver Michael Dinan, so far is the only pilot listed on that entry. We have seen Dinan in many championships ranging from IMSA in Michelin Pilot Challenge and the WeatherTech Championship, to SRO America competition, to the Asian Le Mans Series, in recent years.
Inter Europol Competition also has a reserve, car #43, with two thirds of a possible driver lineup filled in, including Frenchman Clement Novalak and Russian LMP2 racer Vadislav Lomko. We'll see about the status of that car as well, if it is needed. There are three reserves in the LMGT3 category. Two Ferrari 296 GT3's, one each for Formula Racing and Kessel Racing. The Danish team with car #52, has brothers Johnny and Conrad Laursen listed as the first two drivers, while the Swiss based Kessel Racing team carries #74 with British racers John Hartshorne and Ben Tuck signed up in case they are needed, awaiting the possible necessity of a third driver.
The final reserve is also in LMGT3, the #72 car for the Swiss Racing Spirit of Leman team that we have seen in recent years in European Le Mans Series competition campaigning in LMP3. They have an Aston Martin Vantage GT3 on the reserve list with American driver for Aston Martin Derek DeBoer (known mostly in SRO GT World Challenge America competition lately), along with his co-driver, the man who we nickname with his initials, VHC, Valentin Hasse-Clot, who is rapid behind the wheel of a GT3 car. DeBoer and VHC are teamed up with Frenchman Maxime Robin, and again, they are a reserve entry, so they may or may not be needed.
But, they still have a potent driver trio. There you have it. The 2024 deep dive into the entry list for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. All three classes will be super competitive. There is a lot that can and will develop between now and the month of June when the race happens on Father's Day weekend, June 15th and 16th. Stay tuned and we'll keep you informed. For now, so long, everybody, and take care.
