Michelin Le Mans Cup has 33 cars entered for the third round of the 2021 season, which will run at Monza in Italy.
There are quite a few changes with regards to not only competing cars, but also competing drivers, compared to the previous round at Paul Ricard in early June.
GT3 Championship leader Rino Mastronardi in Iron Lynx Ferrari #8 won’t be racing at Monza, but will be replaced by Gabriele Lancieri. Lancieri will share the car with Paolo Ruberti, who was replaced by Logan Sargeant in France. The most important thing for the team is however to score good points for the teams’ championship, where the champion gets an auto-invite to Le Mans 2022.
Julien Andlauer is back in the PZoberer Zürichsee by TFT Porsche #2, where Nicolas Leutwiler has a golden opportunity to go into the lead of the standings, in case the Iron Lynx Ferrari #8 gets into troubles. Andlauer was racing at the Nürburgring 24 Hours last time out, since that race had much higher priority for Porsche than LMC.
10Q Racing Team Mercedes #93 is also back in the field. Wim Spinoy and Kenneth Heyer have only raced at the opening round in Barcelona so far, but this adds a bit more variation to the car choice in the category.
Photo: JJ Media
TF Sport #97 will bring a single Aston Martin Vantage GT3 for Ben Keating and Ross Gunn. They will use that as a warm-up for the FIA WEC, which runs one week later. It is a bit strange for them, not to enter the ELMS race – but this could very well be a case of that race being oversubscribed, with a massive 44-car entry.
AF Corse Ferrari #61 is an extra car this time out, with Gino Forgione being the only driver entered so far.
There is a total of seven GT3 cars, with five of those counting towards the championship – #61 and #97 are hidden in the points game, since they are not full-season entries.
26 LMP3 cars have entered the race at this current time.
Nielsen Racing #7, United Autosports #23 and Cool Racing #69 are all equal on points, in the lead of the standings, and they will stick to Tony Wells/Colin Noble, John Schauerman/Wayne Boyd, and Maurice Smith/Matt Bell.
Mühlner Motorsport #21 has chosen to put Jeroen Bleekemolen in the car, but haven’t named his co-driver.
Frikadelli Racing Team #30 is finally ready to compete. The team has focused on the Nürburgring 24 Hours, plus the huge shock passing of Sabine Schmitz in March. Her life partner and co-team owner Klaus Abbelen will be driving the Ligier JS P320 alongside Axcil Jefferies.
DKR Engineering #3 has changed both drivers. Jon Brownson and Dario Cangialosi have been put in the car for Monza, being an all-new combination.
Photo: JJ Media
The winners of the opening round, RLR MSport #15 is back with Michael Benham and Tommy Foster, but will probably regret that they didn’t enter the full championship, since they can only run for race trophies, but no championship points.
That’s the same for Jonathan Brossard and Nicolas Schatz onboard ANS Team JSE Management #6, and Rinaldi Racing #55 with Steve Parrow and Dominik Schwager, plus TS Corse #73 with Pietro Peccenini and Cian Carey.
Team Thor #77 has made a change to their line-up, so Anders Fjordbach will be the new teammate of Audunn Gudmundsson at Monza, Spa and Portimao. This will be the first race experience for Fjordbach in an LMP3, having focused primarily on LMP2 cars until now.
The H24 entry was expected with their Hydrogen car, but the innovative prototype on an LMP3 base, sadly won’t be entering this time either. We still hope to see it race later this year, after doing some testing earlier in the year.
The Michelin Le Mans Cup will run on Saturday afternoon 10 July at 17.00 CET.
