G-Drive Racing has slowly but surely got their European Le Mans 2019 season drivers signed.
The only 20 year-old Dutch superstar Job van Uitert will share the orange ORECA 07 Gibson #26 with Roman Rusinov and Jean-Eric Vergne.
Van Uitert made his ELMS debut in 2018 for RLR MSport, and was instantly fast. Even though he was only ranked Bronze driver, he often gave the more professional drivers a lot of think about in the LMP3 category – especially when he was just 0,178 of a second from Pole Position at the opening round at Paul Ricard. The RLR MSport team ended up winning the 2018 ELMS LMP3 title, with Job van Uitert being a major player in that.
He has been upgraded to Silver ranked driver in 2019, but that fits very well into the G-Drive Racing programme, since their Silver driver, Andrea Pizzitola, recently was upgraded to Gold.
Photo: JJ Media
Rusinov and Pizzitola won the ELMS LMP2 title in 2018, and therefore won a slot on the grid for the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2019. Vergne was part of the team at five out of six weekends, but wasn’t able to join them at the opening round at Paul Ricard, since that clashed with his Formula E commitment in Rome. Those two events will clash again in 2019, but we are yet to find out if Formula E and ELMS can agree about him doing double duties that weekend, or if he only have to focus on the Techeetah programme in Formula E, where he is the defending Champion.
On top of the six race weekends in ELMS 2019, the G-Drive Racing squad will also race at the 6 hours of Spa Francorchamps in the FIA World Endurance Championship in May, to gain even more experience before the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.
The team has plans about doing a FIA WEC 2019/20 season, but it’s unclear in today’s announcement, if Job van Uitert is part of that programme.
The European Le Mans Series 2019 starts on 14 April, with the first collective testing in the week ahead.
