Good luck to our WEC teams and drivers at Daytona!
The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship gets underway this weekend with its legendary race - the Rolex 24 at Daytona - where over 25 FIA WEC drivers plus six WEC teams are in attendance.
In the headline DPi category, no less than ten WEC drivers will be competing for outright victory including Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez who will both be racing under the Ally Cadillac banner. Kobayashi and Lopez will be up against their Toyota team-mate Mike Conway who is entered with Whelen Engineering Racing.
Also driving in DPi will be United Autosports’ Alex Lynn (Cadillac Racing), Filipe Albuquerque (Konica Minolta) and Olly Jarvis (Meyer Shank Racing) as well as Vector Sport’s Sebastien Bourdais in the No. 1 Cadillac Racing entry. Peugeot TotalEnergies’ Loic Duval and JOTA’s Will Stevens will also be competing at Daytona as well as Texan Ben Keating who is doing the incredible feat of racing in both DPi and LMP2!
Elsewhere, the WEC’s LMP2 teams United Autosports and G-Drive Racing are both entered in the 10-car LMP2 category. Other WEC driver names in LMP2 include Prema Orlen Team’s Louis Deletraz who is competing for Tower Motorsport, Phil Hanson and Will Owen who will drive United Autosports’ No. 22 Oreca plus Oliver Rasmussen (JOTA) and James Allen representing G-Drive Racing. TF Sport’s Keating will complete his mammoth double duty stint with PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports.
Lo and behold, the official ๐ฝ๐๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐พ๐ผ๐๐ ๐๐พ๐๐๐ฟ๐๐๐ for the ๐ฅ๐ข๐๐๐ซ ๐ฎ๐ฐ ๐๐ง @DAYTONA
— #IMSA (@IMSA) January 24, 2022
The action begins on January 29th at 1:30PM ET on NBC.
For international coverage information: https://t.co/spxJEs7BfO#IMSA / #Rolex24 pic.twitter.com/Lb4cfa5Z5X
The GTD Pro category also sees plenty of familiar WEC faces including AF Corse Ferrari’s No. 51 team-mates Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado who will drive for Risi Competizione. Team Project 1’s Matteo Cairoli will also drive in the same category with WeatherTech Racing.
Finally, in the GTD class Porsche’s Richard Lietz is entered to drive a Porsche 911 GT3R with Wright Motorsports plus Simon Mann and Nicklas Nielsen will both drive for AF Corse in the Ferrari 488 GT3. Finally, WEC Team Northwest AMR will be present in the US with its 2022 WEC line-up consisting of Paul Dalla Lana, David Pittard and Nicki Thiim.
On behalf of everyone at the FIA WEC, we wish our teams and drivers the very best of luck this weekend!
For more information about Daytona and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, please click HERE.
CONVERGENCE
In 2023, Daytona will see Le Mans Hypercar and Le Mans Daytona h prototypes do battle for the first time. This time next year, endurance racing will begin a new exciting chapter when the Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) and Le Mans Daytona h (LMDh) prototypes take the track together for the first time. This new era will kick off officially in 2023 at the Rolex 24 at Daytona as a result of the collaboration on technical regulations between the ACO, the FIA and the IMSA.