G-Drive Racing has chosen to pull out from the FIA World Endurance Championship and the European Le Mans Series for the 2022 season.
The reasoning behind this is the sanctions against Russia, following their invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in the parent company of G-Drive, Gazprom no longer being able to make deals with the western countries.
Roman Rusinov, the face of G-Drive Racing during all their many different collaborations, with many different teams for the past many seasons, announced the decision in a social media post, that there would be no G-Drive sponsored cars outside Russia in 2022.
That has an influence on Algarve Pro Racing and Eurointernational, who was supposed to run 3 LMP2 cars and a single LMP3 car respectively, in the orange and black colours this year.
Photo: JJ Media
The entry list for the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2022 was supposed to be released last Monday 28 February, but was put on hold. There was a minimum of two, if not all three LMP2 cars on that entry list. ACO has announced today, that the entry for this year’s race will re-open until 9 March at 3.00 pm. The same applies to the FIA WEC and ELMS, so Algarve Pro Racing and Eurointernational has the chance of changing their entry to their own names, and still compete with the same number of cars – if they have the budgets for it.
Glickenhaus Racing has also been quick to announce the possibility of a swift deal, so a third SCG 007 Hypercar potentially could be entered for this year’s race. There are just five entries in the Hypercar category, since Peugeot TotalEnergies won’t run this year, because they don’t feel their car is ready to race just yet.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans entry list is expected later this week, once the deadline has closed. If this will be three name changes only on the entry list, or if there is room for anybody on the reserve list – or a third Glickenhaus… Time will tell.
The FIA WEC starts this weekend with their Prologue at Sebring International Raceway, prior to the first race being run on Friday 18 March 2022.
