Yelmer Buurman to make World GT1 debut at San Luis in Team China Corvette

The Superleague Formula front-runner and GP2 podium finisher forms one half of an all-Dutch line-up at Corvette outfit Team China alongside Francesco Pastorelli, a former Dutch and Benelux Formula Ford champion and brother of Nicky, who drives for the rival Munnich Motorsport Lamborghini squad.

"It's not really a series that I had looked at entering before," said Buurman, who takes over the car driven by Jeroen den Boer and Ho-Pin Tung at the last round in China. "My focus is still on formula cars, but I got a call to see if I wanted to do this last week and pretty soon we had a deal."

"I have never driven this Corvette before, but it should be okay. We practised driver changes yesterday and will do so again tonight. It is a good course, there's hardly any run-off, which will make it difficult to find the limit of the brakes, but on the other hand it's quite wide and, you know, after racing at Macau I find every circuit is fine."

Finn Markus Palttala returns to the Belgian Racing Ford team alongside Antoine Leclerc. He replaces Yann Clairay, who has switched to the rival Marc VDS team to partner Maxime Martin.

With regular Marc VDS driver Frederic Makowiecki missing the event in order to compete at next weekend's Zhuhai ILMC race, he has been replaced in the sister car by TC2000 driver Ricardo Risatti, a former Spanish F3 champion.

The last of six driver changes for this weekend comes at the DKR Lamborghini team as former FIA GT3 champion Christopher Haase has been drafted in alongside Manuel Lauck. The German spent most of the 2010 season with the Reiter Lamborghini team.