The DragonSpeed team has presented their full season FIA World Endurance Championship driver for the upcoming 2018/19 season.
The announcement of the participating teams isn’t happening until this Friday, but since the DragonSpeed team is one of those who has invested in one of the new BR1 LMP1 cars, that is developed and designed with a collaboration between BR Engineering and Dallara.
Ben Hanley will get the advancement from their European Le Mans Series LMP2 team, while Renger van der Zande returns to the team, that he previously drove for in the USA in the ALMS. The final driver will be Henrik Hedman who, however, needs and upgrade to his FIA driver ranking. That upgrade has probably already gone through, since they announce the line-up now.
Photo: JJ Media
There is a small ‘but’ in this announcement – van der Zande will be driving at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on the same weekend as the opening round in the FIA WEC at Spa Francorchamps. The team will announce his substitute in the near future.
DragonSpeed was among the best LMP2 teams in the ELMS 2017, where they under the G-Drive Racing #22 banner secured the Championship, while the white and blue #21 had a bit more problems, ending up with technical issues or plain and simple, too slow on the average lap times during the 4 hours. One of the weak points was sadly Hedman, but if he gets a few more kilometres behind the wheel and a lot of hours in the simulator, he will hopefully be able to do his job well.
The team has announced ELMS plans for 2018 too, but haven’t mentioned any driver names yet.
All the participants in the FIA WEC 2018/19 will be announced on 9 February.
