European Le Mans Series will have a massive 44 car field, when Round 4 of 2021 is run at Monza.
This is the final ELMS race prior to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and that, combined with the FIA World Endurance Championship at the same circuit, just one week later, has made a lot of teams do the double, to get the final things sorted out.
The LMP2 field has grown to 19 cars. On top of the 16 regular cars, there will be additional entries from Realteam Racing #70, JOTA #82 and Racing Team Nederland #92. The eagle-eyed sportscar fan has probably already noticed that the two latter numbers are somewhat unusual. That is due to #28 and #29 already being used by IDEC Sport and Ultimate – but then the two digits will just be swapped.
Realteam Racing #70 will run Loic Duval and Esteban Garcia, while JOTA #82 has Sean Gelael and Jazeman Jaafar in the car. Jaafar has previously raced for JOTA, under the Jackie Chan DC Racing banner, when he was part of the Malaysian car in the FIA WEC. He is currently a reserve driver in the FIA WEC.
Photo: JJ Media
Racing Team Nederland #92 has opted to run Giedo van der Garde and Frits van Eerd, to give the latter the most drive time possible, with that brings the primary objective for the weekend, rather than the actual race result. The race is just 4 hours compared to the 6+ hours in the FIA WEC, so it’s no problem to do with two drivers-only.
G-Drive Racing #26 has to call up an old friend, since the weekend clashes with the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, and Nyck de Vries is busy with that. The team has called up Mikkel Jensen, who raced alongside de Vries and Roman Rusinov during the 2020 season. Jensen will arrive at Monza with plenty of recent LMP2 mileage, after doing two IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship rounds at Watkins Glen.
DragonSpeed USA #21 will run their FIA WEC line-up, with Henrik Hedman and Ben Hanley being joined by Juan Pablo Montoya. The ELMS car has only run at two out of three rounds so far, with Ricky Taylor and Gustavo Menezes being the two-star drivers alongside Hedman and Hanley.
Logan Sargeant has been called in as a reserve at Racing Team Turkey #34 once again, since Harry Tincknell has to focus on his American IMSA programme, even though they only race the following weekend.
The LMP3 field is all the usual suspects, with very limited change to the 16 cars. DKR Engineering #4 has Laurents Hörr as the constant, but he will be joined by French racer Mathieu de Barbuat. The team has very a turbulent season, with a lot of driver changes in both ELMS and Michelin Le Mans Cup, but they did win the last round at Paul Ricard with Hörr and Jean-Phillippe Dayraut. Dayraut will however skip this weekend.
Photo: JJ Media
It’s all well-known faces in the GTE category. The 9 full season cars are back with the 27 drivers, who are meant to be in the cars throughout the season. Ross Gunn has no IMSA obligations for this weekend, so he is back in TF Sport Aston Martin #95.
Felipe Nasr is back at Proton Competition Porsche #93, where he will be sharing the car with Richard Lietz and Michael Fassbender.
The 4 Hours of Monza will run on 11 July, and can be viewed live and free via the series YouTube channel.
