Rebellion Racing got the drivers for their primary entry in the FIA World Endurance Championship 2019/20 sorted.
The season starts on three weeks time at Silverstone in Great Britain, and the British-Swiss team has announced that Bruno Senna and Gustavo Menezes will continue at the team, joined by a new driver Norman Nato.
As the plans are at the moment, there will only be a single entry from them in the FIA WEC 2019/20, even though they had entered two cars for the full season. They did run two cars at the Prologue in Barcelona about three weeks ago, with Senna, Menezes and Nato being in the line-up.
So Nathanael Berthon seems to be loser in the musical chairs, which Felipe Nasr was part of in Barcelona as well.
Photo: JJ Media
Senna and Menezes already raced for the team last year, but in each separate cars. Both teammates of Senna, Neel Jani and Andre Lotterer, have chosen to focus on their Formula E programme at Porsche, which they have been employed by all the time. Menezes had, other than Berthon, also Thomas Laurent as teammate in 2019, but the French driver has been hired by Toyota Gazoo Racing as reserve driver, plus he will race for Signatech Alpine Elf #36 in the LMP2 category in the FIA WEC.
Nato only has knowledge of LMP2 cars so far, where he most recently has been super-sub at TDS Racing for a few races this year. Even though it’s hard to read anything into the times on a test day, we saw Nato running 0,7 of a second faster at the Prologue than Berthon, so that might have had an influence, too.
Rebellion Racing is on sponsor hunt, or drivers with some spare change in their pockets, so they can get #3 on the track too in the upcoming season. If you have entered the season but don’t show up, you have to pay a fine once you show up again, which is 30.000 Euro for each missed round. That was what Ginetta used as excuse for not running a car in the spring time nor Le Mans 2019, since the fine from the Manor team hadn’t been paid – and Manor didn’t have any money, because their main sponsor and run out of money.
The FIA WEC 2019/20 starts on 1 September at Silverstone, with a 4-hour race on Sunday afternoon local time.
