Montoya with United Autosports at Le Mans

United Autosports has become a bit of specialist in bringing big names to some of the biggest races around the world.

And when the 24 Hours of Le Mans will be run later this year, it won’t be an exception.

Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya will be driving in their Ligier JS P217 Gibson together with Will Owen and Hugo de Sadeleer.

Montoya has pretty much driven everything with four tires and a steering wheel. He has driving British Formula 3, Formula 3000, CART and IndyCar.

Then he went on to have 6 seasons in Formula 1, before going to NASCAR for 8 years. The Indycars was interesting for him again, so he went back and raced those, and was awfully close at winning the Championship in 2015, but finished second.

He has started another new chapter of his career this year, by racing for Acura Team Penske in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

He has grabbed wins in pretty much everything that he has driven, and now he aims at another big win to his CV.

He has already won the Indy 500, the Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix, the Daytona 24 hours, with the 24 Hours of Le Mans on his sight now.

He tested the Porsche LMP1 car back in 2015, but it never turned out to be more than a test. But it still made him interested in the sport, so he opted to go that route, only with Team Penske and their DPi car in the IMSA series.

Juan Pablo Montoya
Photo Courtesy of IMSA / Richard Dole

While this year’s Le Mans will be in a LMP2 car, Montoya has hinted at him going for the overall victory, which is pretty unlikely in a LMP2 car this year, since 10 LMP1 cars are entered. It was very close to happening on the Jackie Chan DC Racing outfit with their LMP2 car, but there was “only” five LMP1 cars, which all had problems. The chance of that happening with 10 cars this year, is very slim – but never say never.

United Autosports will enter two cars at Le Mans this year, where the other will be driven by Phil Hanson and Filipe Albuerquerque and a third, not yet named driver. But a cautious guess would be Paul di Resta, since he has already done both the Daytona 24 Hours and the 12 Hours of Sebring for the team.

Prior to the 24 hours race in France, the United Autosports team will participate in the European Le Mans Series, which starts in two weeks’ time at Paul Ricard.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans will be run on 16-17 June.

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