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United SportsCar's 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours entries to go to amateurs

The two guaranteed entries for the Le Mans 24 Hours awarded by the United SportsCar Championship will go to amateur drivers in 2016

The USC has announced two new trophies for the top amateur in the end-of-season points in both the Prototype and GT Le Mans classes for next season.

The entry will be specific to the driver, but it is hoped by USC sanctioning body IMSA that he or she would go to Le Mans with the same team with which they compete in the US series.

IMSA boss Ed Bennett said: "Pro-Am [amateur] drivers have been and likely always will be the heritage of sportscar racing.

"We are very pleased to build on the collaborative strategic alliance between the Automobile Club de l'Ouest [the organiser of Le Mans] and IMSA."

The amateur drivers must be rated as silver or bronze, according to the ACO's system of classification, and must have built a career outside of racing.

They must also compete in all four of the USC North American Endurance Cup races at Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta as a minimum to be eligible for the guaranteed entries.

The new Prototype trophy is named after the late Jim Trueman, a successful driver in Can-Am, who the under two-litre class in 1981, and founder of the Truesports CART team that took Bobby Rahal to his Indianapolis 500 victory in 1986.

The corresponding award in GTLM is named in honour of Bob Akin, whose eponymous team won the 1986 Sebring 12 Hours.

The USC's allocation of guaranteed entries for Le Mans next year will be awarded on an ad hoc basis in the same way as it was by the American Le Mans Series for 2014.

They went to the Muscle Milk/Pickett and Risi Competizione teams, which both subsequently opted not to take up their slots.

The last US team to take up an automatic entry was the Level 5 team with an HPD ARX-03b LMP2 in 2013 (pictured).

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