Lynn to join Ganassi Cadillac IMSA line-up, with view to '23 WEC deal
Alex Lynn will join the Ganassi Cadillac squad for next year's IMSA SportsCar Championship in a deal that is set to take him into the World Endurance Championship in 2023.
The 2020 GTE Pro Le Mans 24 Hours class winner with Aston Martin has signed a long-term deal to race for Chip Ganassi Racing and Cadillac, Autosport/Motorsport.com has learned.
The Ganassi deal will result in him driving a Caddy DPi-V.R Daytona Prototype international for the team in IMSA next year.
That is expected to be prelude to a return to the WEC the year after when the General Motors brand's new LMDh prototype comes on stream.
Lynn will race one of two DPi-V.Rs fielded by Ganassi in the North American IMSA series in 2022.
Sebastien Bourdais is known to have signed up to return to the team with which he took GTE Pro honours at Le Mans aboard a Ford GT in 2016.
Renger van der Zande, part of the line-up this year for Ganassi's return to sportscars, looks certain to stay, while two-time overall Le Mans winner Earl Bamber appears set to fill the final full-time berth for 2022.
Peugeot-contracted Kevin Magnussen, who is partnering van der Zande this season, will not be a full-timer in the year that the French manufacturer begins racing in the WEC with its new 9X8 Le Mans Hypercar.
Lynn was not able to comment on his future plans, which follow his replacement by Oliver Rowland at Mahindra for the forthcoming 2021-22 Formula E season.
#01 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac DPi: Renger van der Zande, Kevin Magnussen
Photo by: Bill Gulker
But Lynn is known to have tested the Ganassi Caddy at Road America in August along with Bourdais and Bamber.
Lynn has already raced a Cadillac DPi in IMSA: he won the 2017 Sebring 12 Hours with Wayne Taylor Racing on what remains his only appearance in the series so far.
He is also managed by Dario Franchitti, who took two of his three Indy 500 victories with Ganassi over a six-year stint with the team.
Neither Ganassi nor Cadillac provided a comment on their planned driver roster for 2022.
Cadillac announced in August that it is joining the LMDh ranks, stating that it intends to race in both IMSA and the WEC with the new breed of LMP2-based prototype.
A spokesman for Cadillac elaborated on a perfunctory statement, confirming that the marque is planning a full participation in the WEC rather than just contesting the centrepiece Le Mans round.
It was announced that Ganassi and Action Express Racing will continue their relationship with Cadillac as partner teams in 2023, but no further details of the programme were revealed.
Action Express subsequently issued a statement saying it was looking forward to racing the new Dallara-developed Cadillac in IMSA, but Ganassi has so far offered nothing in way of elaboration.
Ganassi is expected to run the WEC arm of the Cadillac LMDh programme.
It raced at Le Mans with the Ford GT in 2016-19, but the the Ganassi-branded team that represented the marque full time in the WEC was run by Multimatic Motorsport from a base near Silverstone.
It appears that a further announcement on Cadillac's LMDh plans and its driver roster moving forward could be imminent.
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