AF Corse has announced the drivers for the two GTE Pro cars, for the upcoming FIA World Endurance Championship 2019/20 season.
The pairing will remain unchanged in the #51, where 2017 Champions James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi will share the car once again. This will be the third season together for them, who other than becoming World Champions in 2017, also secured the Le Mans victory in June 2019.
Davide Rigon will remain in the #71, but he will be joined by Miguel Molina. The former Audi works driver, who then went on to become a Ferrari works driver for the last few seasons, will replace Sam Bird, who had been paired upwith Rigon since the start of 2016.
The issue for Bird is that he also races in Formula E for Envision Virgin Racing, and with currently two date clashes between FIA WEC and Formula E, and Bird standing firm on participating in all Formula E rounds no matter what, there was no other option for AF Corse, since they don’t want a driver that isn’t doing the full FIA WEC season.
The team hasn’t announced their third drivers for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, so there might be a slight opening for Sam Bird there, if they still are in contact by then.
Molina was already paired up with Rigon at the Prologue in Barcelona three weeks ago, plus Molina has been the third driver of #71 for the last few years at Le Mans. So the two already know each other very well.
The FIA WEC 2019/20 starts in two weeks’ time at the Silverstone Circuit in England.