Today was a busy day in sports car racing as two major entry lists were announced while a full-time IndyCar entrant was announced yesterday.
Let's start with sports cars and the FIA World Endurance Championship. Thirty-one entrants have been announced with nine entrants in LMP1, split between the sub-classes H and L, seven LMP2 entries, seven GTE-Pro and eight GTE-Am.
In the sub-class for Hybrid LMP1 cars (LMP1-H), the three big players Audi, Toyota and Porsche each have two cars entered. Tom Kristensen and Loïc Duval return to defend their world championship and are joined by Lucas di Grassi after the retirement of Allan McNish. The #2 Audi remains the same with André Lotterer, Benoît Tréluyer and Marcel Fässler.
Toyota shifts their driver line-up sightly with Stéphane Sarrazin joining Alexander Wurz and Kazuki Nakajima in the #7. Nicolas Lapierre will move to the #8 and joins Anthony Davidson and Sébastien Buemi.
Porsche two cars will be numbers 14 and 20. The #14 will be driven by Romain Dumas, Marc Lieb and Neel Jani while the #20 will feature Timo Bernhard, Mark Webber and Brendon Hartley.
In the privateer, non-hybrid LMP1-L subclass features a return of Rebellion Racing who will run two cars. Their driver line-up is incomplete but we know Nicolas Prost and Nick Heidfeld will be in the #12 and Mathias Beche will be in the #13. The other LMP1-L entry is the #9 Lotus T129 of former Formula One driver Christijan Albers.
LMP2 will not see a return of the champions OAK Racing as they have moved to the United SportsCar Championship. Strakka Racing will run a Dome-Nissan with drivers Nick Leventis, Jonny Kane and Danny Watts. Millennium Racing enters two Oreca-Nissans with Fabien Giroix in the #22 and Stefan Johannson in the #23. G-Drive Racing returns with Romain Rusinov as one of their drivers but as a Morgan-Nissan instead of an Oreca chassis.
The Russian SMP Racing will run two Oreca-Nissans. The #27 will have Sergey Zlobin, Maurizio Mediani and Nicolas Minassian as drivers and the #37 features an all-Russian driver line-up of Viktor Shaitar, Kirill Ladygin and Anton Ladygin. KCMG will run the #47 Oreca-Nissan with Matthew Howson as a driver.
GTE-Pro features three Ferraris, two Aston Martins and two Porsches. Gianmaria Bruni will defend his championship in the #51 458 Italia GT2 with Toni Vilander as a teammate. Davide Rigon will drive the #71 Ferrari. The defending ELMS GT champions, Ram Racing will run the #52 Ferrari with Matt Griffin as one of their drivers.
After falling short of the title in 2013, drivers Darren Turner and Stefan Mücke will be split up for 2014 with Turner in the #97 Aston Martin Vantage GTE and Mücke in the #99. Porsche will have French drivers Patrick Pilet and Frédéric Makowiecki in the the #91 911 RSR and Marco Holzer in the #92.
Ferrari will field four GTE-Am entries. Defending GTE-Am champions 8 Star Motosports return with Enzo Potolicchio driver the #90 Ferrari. Luís Pérez Companc and Stephen Wyatt have been announced as drivers of the #61 and #81 AF Corse Ferraris respectively. Ram Racing will run the #53 Ferrari with Johnny Mowlem, Ben Collins and Mark Patterson.
Aston Martin will run two cars again in GTE. David Heinemeier Hansson will join Paul Dalla Lana in the #99 Aston Martin. Kristian Poulsen has been announced as a driver of the #95 Aston Martin.
Christian Ried returns to Proton Competition to driver the #88 Porsche 911 RSR. ProSpeed Competition enter WEC with driver François Perrodo in the #75 Porsche.
24 Hours of Le Mans Entry List
The thirty-one WEC entries will all compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and will be joined by an additional twenty-five entries.
There will be only one additional LMP1 entry at the 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans. That will be the #3 Audi of Oliver Jarvis, Marco Bonanomi and Filipe Albuquerque, which will also compete in the WEC round at Spa.
Ten additional cars are entered in LMP2. Notable entries are the #24 Sébastien Loeb Racing Oreca-Nissan with René Rast listed as a driver. OAK Racing will have two cars, the #35 Morgan-Nissan of Alex Brundle and the #33 OAK Racing Team Asia Ligier-HPD of David Cheng. Greaves Motorsport will return with the #41 Zytek-Nissan and Tom Kimber-Smith listed as a driver.
GTE-Pro has twelve entries. Corvette and SRT Viper will return each with two cars and Aston Martin will run a third car. Bruno Senna is listed the driver of the #89 Vantage GTE. Corvette will have Jan Magnussen and Antonio García in the #73 and Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner in the #74. There has been no announcement on Corvettes third drivers. Ryan Briscoe and Robin Liddell were third drivers at Daytona. Briscoe may have a conflict with the Le Mans test day and his IndyCar schedule.
Viper has Rob Bell listed for the #93 and Jeroen Bleekmolen for the #94. Bell ran with Kuno Wittmer and Jonathan Bomarito at Daytona. Bleekmolen ran a Viper GT3 in the GTD class at Daytona. The other Viper third driver at Daytona was Ryan Hunter-Reay who ran with Dominik Farnbacher and Marc Goossens.
GTE-Am will have sixteen entries. Fabien Barthez is listed as driver in the #58 Ferrari for Team Sofrev ASP. Barthez was the starting goalkeeper for France when they won the 1998 World Cup on home soil. Patrick Dempsey is listed for the #77 Dempsey Racing-Proton Porsche 911 RSR. Aston Martin has a third factory entry for GTE-Am with Richie Stanaway listed for the #98 Vantage.
Nissan occupies the Garage 56 spot and will run their #0 ZEOD RC hybrid with Lucas Ordóñez listed as a driver.
Saveedra To KV Racing With AFS As Sponsor
Sebastián Saavedra will follow fellow-Sebastian (though different spellings) Sébastien Bourdais to KV Racing after teaming at Dragon Racing in 2013. Savaadra will drive the #17 Automatic Fire Sprinklers Chevrolet. Automatic Fire Sprinklers are better known as AFS and were a prominent sponsor of Andretti Autosport in Indy Lights for many years, sponsoring drivers such as JR Hildebrand, Charlie Kimball, Wade Cunningham, Raphael Matos, Martin Plowman and Saavedra himself. Saavedra tested for the team at Sonoma yesterday.
Saavedra brings the unofficial 2014 IndyCar entry list up to twenty full-time entries. Saavedra is the tenth announced Chevrolet entry. Ganassi will run four cars with Penkse running three, KV running two and Ed Carpenter Racing one.
Honda has ten entries announced as well. Andretti Autosport leads with four cars, Schmidt Peterson Hamilton have announced two cars with Rahal Letterman Lanigan, Foyt, Fisher-Hartman and Coyne all having one entry announced at this time.
Optimistically speaking, there could be as many as four more open seats to run full-time in 2014. It is believed now that RLLR has announced that they will have National Guard sponsorship they are close to a second car. Coyne normally fields a second car and Bryan Herta Autosport has still yet to announced their driver for 2014. The only Chevrolet team yet to announced a driver is Panther Racing. Panther have been testing Colombian Carlos Huertas this winter.
A sample of drivers who competed in 2013 and have yet to be announced for a ride in 2014 are Oriol Servià, Simona de Silvestro, Conor Daly, Luca Filippi, J.R. Hildebrand, James Jakes, EJ Viso and Tristan Vautier. It appears Vautier and Viso are moving on to sports cars.
Racer Magazine's Marshall Pruett is reporting we will fine out Simona de Silvestro's plans for 2014 tomorrow.
Sage Karam has a scholarship after winning the Indy Lights championship but has no ride lined up. Karam could reportedly become a development driver for Chip Ganassi and drive a second car in United SportsCar Championship with Marino Franchitti. Jack Hawksworth has tested an IndyCar for RLLR and Dale Coyne Racing in recent months.
Alex Tagliani recently announced he will be driving in NASCAR Canadian Tire Series. Tagliani ran the series in 2007 and 2008 while he didn't have a ride in IndyCar after reunification. He won his only NCATS race at Edmonton in 2008. He also competed for Rocketsports Racing in the PC class at the 24 Hours of Daytona.
IndyCar media day is scheduled for next Tuesday in Orlando, Florida. The official preseason test is scheduled for March 17-18th at Barber Motorsports Park.
Abt Sportsline Names Formula E Drivers
The German-based Abt Sportsline announced their two drivers for the 2014-15 Formula E season. Lucas di Grassi and Daniel Abt will compete for the team in the electric-based series. Abt Sportsline runs an Audi DTM team for drivers Mattias Ekström, Miguel Molina, Edoardo Mortara and Adrien Tambay.
Di Grassi drives for Audi in WEC while Daniel joins the team run by his father Hans-Jürgen. The first round of the Formula E championship will take place September 13, 2014 in Beijing.
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