With only one and a half weeks until the start of the pre-season testing, there are more and more announcements coming from the European Le Mans Series and Michelin Le Mans Cup teams.
Inter Europol Competition has announced Belgian driver Ugo de Wilde for the ELMS. The 18-year-old racing driver has a single-seater background, having run in French F4 amongst other series. His big goal is to participate in the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2023, and he is hoping to find the budget to do the Road To Le Mans race this year. Ugo de Wilde will be sharing car #13 with Martin Hippe, and a not yet named third driver.
On the other hand, we might have lost their car #14. The team had signed a deal with drivers from Brazil, but they are not allowed to travel to Europe at the moment. So that car has available seats for now.
Cool Racing has revealed the colours of their #37 entry this year. That car will be raced by Antonin Borga, Alexander Coigny and Nicolas Lapierre. They have added some grey colours to the car this year, having run in predominantly blue the previous years.
The team has also announced that Josh Skelton will be sharing a car with Antoine Doquin in the Michelin Le Mans Cup. The team will run two cars, with the other being occupied by Matt Bell and Mo Smith. The team haven’t shown their LMP3 colours yet.
Team WRT showed their FIA WEC colours some weeks ago, and the ELMS car will once again be white, red and black, but in a different combination. Their drivers for the ELMS will be Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Charles Milesi.
Graff has updated the livery for the ELMS LMP3 car. It will however still be the French national colours on the car. Eric Trouillet, David Droux and Sebastien Page are the three drivers on the car for this year. They haven’t shown their LMP2 livery yet.
Last but not least, there has been a livery update from Algarve Pro Racing for their “own” car, running under their own name, opposite to the G-Drive Racing cars #25 and #26. The car has a significantly different design this year, with the Drive Fast-Act Faster campaign of saving the rain forest. To promote this, they have painted trees all over the car, that is going to be driving by Ferdinand Habsburg, Richard Bradley and Diego Menchaca. Habsburg is the man behind the initiative.
The European Le Mans Series will start their testing in one and a half weeks’ time at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, ahead of the season opener on Sunday 18 April. The Michelin Le Mans Cup will be testing on Wednesday, with their opening race bring run Saturday afternoon.