Nicolas Lapierre steps in for Bruno Senna in McLaren at Silverstone

The Frenchman will replace Bruno Senna, who is racing in the Berlin round of the Formula E Championship, in the #59 VonRyan Racing McLaren 650S GT3 alongside Alvaro Parente and Adrian Quaife-Hobbs.

Lapierre has been called up after making two appearances with the ART Grand Prix McLaren squad in last year's BES, which included a second-place finish at Paul Ricard.

Team boss Dave Ryan told AUTOSPORT: "It was always planned that Bruno would miss this race [once the Formula E schedule had been changed], and Nicolas is good and was available.

"He's a pretty laidback guy, so we are confident that we can slot him in and he will do the job."

Ryan said that no decision had been made on the vacant seat for the Paul Ricard 1000km round in June when Shane van Gisbergen, who races the team's other car with Kevin Estre and Rob Bell, is unavailable due to a V8 Supercars clash.

Lapierre remains under contract with Toyota after he was dropped from its World Endurance Championship LMP1 line-up last season, but there are no plans for him to race or test with the squad.

SILVERSTONE ENTRY ADJUSTMENTS

The Pro Cup line-up for the Silverstone race on Sunday has been boosted to 25 cars by the addition of two entries.

The Schubert BMW squad, which competed in the sister Blancpain Sprint Series last year, makes a one-off entry with a Z4 GT3 entered for Dominik Baumann, Maximilian Sandritter and one yet-to-be-confirmed driver.

Car Collection Motorsport moves up from the Pro-Am ranks for Silverstone because bronze-ranked Peter Schmidt has been replaced in its Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG by gold driver Jan Seyffarth.

A further 23 cars are entered in the Pro-Am class and 13 in the Am Cup.