WEC Season 11 all set to go with Le Mans entries confirmed too on Monday
Saturday, February 25, 2023
Having had five Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 powered teams enter the pre-cursing Asian Le Mans Series pair of events at both Dubai and Yas Marina – with scant reward it has to be said, this season will again see three AMR Vantage GTE cars compete within what will be the final year of GTE class homologated machinery within the WEC.
The #777 D’Station Racing entry remains the closest entry line up to that of last season with Satoshi Hoshino and Tomonobu Fujii coming back to the TF Sport team for some more of the same after a great inaugural year within the international series. All that has changed within that side of the garage is that Charlie Fagg has made way for another GTE debutant in Casper Stevenson joining the fray for the first time.
On the other side of the TF Sport garage has seen the 2022 GTE Am Championship winning #33 car of Ben Keating part company with Aston Martin in favour for the Corvette GTE, only to be replaced by the #25 Oman Racing Team crew with Ahmad Al Harthy stepping up to the top tier a year in from racing the GTW within the European Le Mans Series last season.
He is again joined by Charlie Eastwood as well as former GT America GT4 Champion Michael Dinan who steps up to the Vantage GTE for the first time after only having raced a Vantage GT3 a couple of times before within the International GT Open Series – again with TF Sport.
To round the WEC full season entry off of course comes last season’s GTE Am Class runners up in the #98 Northwest AMR of Paul Dalla Lana. With the Prologue official test just a couple of weeks away in Sebring, Florida the Canadian businessman remains the sole driver so far identified by either the team or series so those missing parts of the AMR jigsaw will be confirmed soon enough.
Then in terms of this seasons centenary event at the Circuit de La Sarthe, the thirty-eight full season WEC entries will be almost doubled in size as the automatic entries from other qualifying series come into effect as well as other qualifying entries form the European Le Mans Series and beyond.
With three Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTE crews also listed as full season ELMS entries as well as the other three crews from the ALMS all being able to submit an application for an entry into this event, room will be tight with the likelihood of many of these teams being disappointed being actually the case than just probably the case. The Danish GMB Motorsport have of course already cemented their Le Mans entry courtesy of winning the 2022 Le Mans Cup Series in the GT3 class.
This season’s Prologue test takes place over the weekend of the 11th and 12th March before the opening 1000miles of Sebring event on Friday 17th March.
Photo credits – A Lofthouse / D Gibson / AMR / Teams
