29 cars have been entered for the Michelin Le Mans Cup 2020 season.
The 29 cars are divided into 11 GT3 cars and 18 LMP3 cars.
The majority of the teams are returnees from last year, but there are a few new names.
Iron Lynx enters a pair of Ferrari 488 GT3 cars. The name might be new in sportscars in 2020, but they have relation to the 2019 Kessel Racing outfit. One of the main persons behind the team, and not least the all-female car in ELMS, Deborah Mayer. She will share one of the cars with Michelle Gatting. Gatting will team up with Rahel Frey and Manuela Gostner once again in the ELMS, so the fast Dane will be busy during the weekends.
Modena Competizione is a new Swiss team, also racing with Ferrari cars. They have the two Swiss drivers Gino Forgione and Martin Grab behind the wheel.
Bullitt Racing will enter a Bentley Continental GT3, with Stephen Pattrick and Romain Monti sharing the drive. There have been Bentley cars in the LMC before, but there weren’t any full season entries last year.
IDEC Sport is primarily known from LMP racing, but do actually have GT3 activities too. They will run a Mercedes-AMG GT3 for Patrice Lafargue and Dimitri Enjalbert. Lafargue is also active in the ELMS this year, where he will race one of the LMP3 cars, while his son Paul is defending LMP2 champion. Enjabert has raced for IDEC Sport for a few years in Blancpain and 24H Series, but he raced a bit of LMP2 cars and some Formula Le Mans prior to that.
LMP3 will once again be a battle between Ligier and Duqueine – formerly known as Norma. All cars will be upgraded to 2020 spec, where they get a bit more power from a different power plant, and better safety, especially in the cockpit area. There are 5 different LMP3 manufacturers, but the entered team has opted to go for the two French marques.
The defending champions DKR Engineering are back with a single car, with Belgian racer Jean Glorieux as the only confirmed driver so far.
They will have strong competition from United Autosports with 3 cars, Nielsen Racing with 2, Grainmarket Racing (which is run by Nielsen Racing) with a single car, a pair of Cool Racing and CD Sport cars, and a single car from fra Racing Experience, Graff, IDEC Sport, Motorsport98, Spirit Of Race, plus the two new teams Mühlner Motorsport and MV2S Racing.
If you look at the names on the list of entered drivers, it’s especially the Nielsen Racing #7 popping out of the list. They are running the defending Asian LMS LMP3 Champions Colin Noble and Tony Wells behind the wheel, which was part of the title fight in 2019 too. They will also be running in a parallel ELMS programme.
Michelin Le Mans Cup will race along most of the European Le Mans Series rounds, while the Le Mans race in June will be named a Road To Le Mans, as the warm-up for 24 Hours race.
The winners of the GT3 championship will get a ticket for the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2021, while the LMP3 only wins the honour – but will have very good cards on their hands if they want to advance into ELMS 2021 with one or more cars.
The Michelin Le Mans Cup 2020 schedule looks like this:
4 April Barcelona
9 May Monza
11 and 13 June Road To Le Mans
18 July Paul Ricard
19 September Spa Francorchamps
18 October Portimao
