United Autosports have sorted out their second car for the LMP2 category in the FIA World Endurance Championship 2022.
It’s been known for a long time, that Josh Pierson would be a new driver to the team. That was announced at Le Mans, and if everything goes according to plan, he will become the youngest ever starter at Le Mans in 2022.
The young American will be joined by two very experienced drivers in the car. Oliver Jarvis is the second driver of the car. The Brit has been Audi Sport factory driver in both their GT3 and Le Mans/FIA WEC programmes, until the LMP1 programme was closed at the end of 2016. He went to Bentley as a works driver, until they ended their commitment. In the meantime, he did get a contract with Mazda Motorsports, and has raced for them since 2018 and until 2021, where they have shut down their DPi programme in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. He has raced thousands of laps in a quick prototype, and plenty of experience to help Pierson get faster and faster.
Jarvis has raced for United Autosports before. He replaced Paul Di Resta at Fuji 2019, when the Scot had Formula 1 tv commitments during that weekend. Jarvis has a previous connection with Richard Dean, one of the owners of United Autosports, all the way back in 2003, where he raced the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch for his outfit.
Photo: JJ Media
The third driver of the team will be Alex Lynn. He has previous experience with UA as well, having raced the Gulf 12 Hours in 2016 with a GT3 car, plus the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2021, where he finished fourth in the LMP2 category, alongside Paul Di Resta and Wayne Boyd. He was a works driver for Aston Martin Racing for a couple of years in GTE Pro, and won Le Mans in 2020 for the team. He has also been active in Formula E for several teams.
2022 will be a busy year for Lynn, since he has a contract with Chip Ganassi Racing as well, where he will race their Cadillac DPi car in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
United Autosports will run Phil Hanson, Filipe Albuquerque and Will Owen in the team’s other car, which most likely will be car #22, since that is their regular FIA WEC number. If Pierson/Jarvis/Lynn will run #32, which is the regular ELMS number for the team, or if it’s going to be #23 as was run at Le Mans 2021, will be revealed later on.
The first race for the new pairing is scheduled to be Sebring in March, where the FIA WEC share the weekend with IMSA.
