BMW M Team WRT has named all six drivers for their LMDh programme in the FIA World Endurance Championship 2024.
When the entry list was announced late November, we already saw Dries Vanthoor in car #15, and Sheldon van der Linde in car #20.
Raffaele Marciello has left Mercedes after a lot of seasons, and has become a BMW works driver. “Lello” has won pretty much everything worth winning in GT3, but now he will make the jump into Prototype racing in the Hypercar category.
He will be sharing car #15 with Marco Wittmann. The multiple DTM champion has done a bit of LMDh racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship as endurance driver in 2023, but he’s brand new to FIA WEC, just like Vanthoor and Marciello.
Photo: BMW Motorsport
Van der Linde is also new in the FIA WEC – but Robin Frijns is most certainly not. The Dutch racer won the LMP2 title in the FIA WEC in 2021, in addition to the 24 Hours of Le Mans LMP2 win the same year. That was followed up by a second place in the Championship in 2022, and a fourth in 2023 – all with Team WRT. He has won a lot of GT3 races, including the Spa 24 Hours.
Frijns was teammates with Rene Rast at Audi Sport for many years – now they will race together in BMW #20. Rast has been active for Team WRT in LMP2, but after three DTM titles for Audi, he was kind of stuck in the series, being a bit of a PR success. The German was on the way to be a part of the Audi LMP1 programme, before that was shut down, and his focus turned towards DTM and GT3, sprinkled with a bit of Formula E.
The team has only announced all names for their LMDh drivers for the Hypercar category. They also compete in LMGT3, with Augusto Farfus and Valentino Rossi being the only names revealed so far.
The FIA WEC 2024 starts in Qatar, on the first Saturday of March.
