United Autosports has finally announced their full driver line-up for the 2021 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Car #22 is their FIA World Endurance Championship car, and will consist of the three regular drivers – Phil Hanson, Filipe Albuquerque and Fabio Scherer. While Hanson and Albuquerque are the defending champions of the race, it’s going to be the first for Swiss driver Scherer.
Three of the drivers from their European Le Mans Series programme will share car #32. Nico Jamin and Manuel Maldonado are already teammates in the same car in ELMS, and they will be joined by Jonathan Aberdein as the third driver. Aberdein is usually onboard #22 in ELMS together with Hanson and Tom Gamble. Gamble is however FIA WEC driver for GR Racing in their Porsche #86 in GTE Am, so he won’t lose out on a Le Mans in 2021 either.
The team does also enter car #23, which is a very interesting car, when you look at the drivers. Paul Di Resta is the defending LMP2 winner (together with Hanson and Albuquerque), but since Hanson has been upgraded to Gold, there was a Platinum/Gold-ranked driver too many in the car, so he has only had the role as a substitute for Filipe Albuquerque at the FIA WEC race in Portimao, since there was a date clash with IMSA.
Photo: JJ Media
Di Resta will share the car with Wayne Boyd, who is a well-known face at United Autosports. He has jumped a bit in and out of the LMP2 cars, switching between LMP2 and LMP3 for the team. He is running the LMP2 car in the IMSA championship, and was called up for Portimao, when Fabio Scherer had a positive COVID-19 test prior to the Portimao FIA WEC race.
Harry Tincknell will be the third driver of the car, and he has plenty of LMP2 experience already. He started at JOTA, with their open cockpit Zytek, and went on to be hired by Mazda for their DPi car. He has been racing for Racing Team Turkey this year in the ELMS, when he doesn’t have date clashes with IMSA. And oh yeah – he is the defending GTE Pro winner of the 24 hours race too, claiming it with Aston Martin.
All three cars are entered in the main LMP2 category, since they don’t run any Bronze rated drivers in the cars, and will surely all be contenders for the victory.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans will run on 21-22 August 2021.
