Automobile Club l’Ouest has announced the starting list for this year’s 24 hours at Le Mans.
The list consists of sixty-two cars as it has been since 2019. There are some surprises, but most of them are already known since the FIA World Endurance Championship has handed automatic invitations to the majority of the field.
In Hypercar, there are FIA World Endurance Championship cars plus an extra from Glickenhaus Racing. Peugeot TotalEnergies can’t get their car ready for the race this year since it would require a start at Spa Francorchamps in May.
In LMP2, we have 27 cars in total, of which thirteen of them come from the FIA WEC. Furthermore, there is DKR Engineering #3 from their ELMS LMP3 title, Nielsen Racing #24 from their Asian Le Mans Series LMP2 title, and CD Sport with their Asian Le Mans Series LMP3 championship. From the 2022 ELMS season, we have TDS Racing x Vaillante #13, Duqueine Team #30, Ultimate #35, Cool Racing #37, Graff Racing #40, Inter Europol Competition #43, Algarve Pro Racing #47, IDEC Sport #48, and Panis Racing #65.
The GTE Pro category has seven competing cars, with the usual five, plus an extra Corvette Racing #63, as well as Riley Motorsports Ferrari #74, that comes with a dream team with Sam Bird, Felipe Fraga and Shane van Gisbergen.
Photo: JJ Media
The GTE Am has 23 cars, with 13 of them from FIA WEC, while the rest have ELMS connection plus two IMSA cars. Hardpoint Motorsport Porsche #99 comes from IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship as Rob Ferriol won Bob Akin Award in 2021, as the best Bronze-rated driver in the GTD category. WeatherTech Racing Porsche #79 returns to Le Mans, but this year they choose to come back to GTE Am, after Cooper MacNeil competed in GTE Pro in 2021.
There are six cars on the reserve list. High Class Racing #49 is the first reserve, where Jan and Kevin Magnussen are registered together with Mark Patterson. If they got called up, however, it won’t be with those three drivers since Kevin’s recent return to Formula 1 has a date clash with the race in Baku.
Rinaldi Racing Ferrari #488 has Pierre Ehret on the reserve list after driving in the Asian Le Mans Series last month. Racing Team Nederland #29 is on the reserve list since they’re only competing in IMSA this year. There’s no direct spot for Absolute Racing Porsche #18 either, just as there is no spot for them in the FIA WEC, so they have to be happy with competing in the ELMS.
TF Sport Aston Martin #95 is another team that’s only on the reserve list, even though they’re competing in both Asian Le Mans and European Le Mans Series with John Hartshorne.
Last but not least, High Class Racing #20 is sixth on the list, with Dennis Andersen and Anders Fjordbach registered so far.
The entire list with all the competing cars plus the six reserves is here.
