The 2019 season of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship haven’t even finished yet, but the plans for 2020 are already slowly but surely being announced.
Whelen Engineering has confirmed that they once again will sponsor the Action Express Cadillac #31, at Pipo Derani and Felipe Nasr will continue to race for them.
The sponsor with the red and white colours has been the naming sponsor on the car since 2015, but both drivers are relatively new in that comparison. Nasr started with the team in 2018, where he ended up winning the Championship together with Eric Curran. Curran chose to dial down his motorsport activities in 2019, and revert to being the third driver of the car, during the longer endurance rounds. Pipo Derani was available on the market, when the ESM team closed down last fall, and AX Racing was very fast at grabbing him, making it an all Brazilian car throughout the season, plus American Curran in the longer races.
Derani, Curran and Nasr won the 12 Hours of Sebring in March 2019, plus they finished on the podium at the Daytona 24 Hours back in January.
The third driver of the car for the 2020 isn’t ready to be announced just yet, likewise the driver combination in the sister car branded Mustang Sampling isn’t ready either.
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship will race the penultimate round of 2019 this weekend at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, with Derani/Nasr sitting second in the Championship for the DPi cars.