Most Le Mans 24 Hours top class entries since 2011 as IMSA regulars boost grid

The Hypercar field for the double-points round of the World Endurance Championship on 10-11 June represents a three-car increase on the 13 full-season entries for the first edition of the series in which LMDh prototypes will race against Le Mans Hypercar machinery.

Porsche Penske Motorsport has entered an additional 963 LMDh despite previously backing away from any plan to field one or both the cars contesting this year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship at Le Mans.

That Porsche so far only has Felipe Nasr listed as a driver on the full 62-car entry list for the 100th running of the French enduro published on Monday.

The IMSA car joins the two factory Porsche entries from PPM. These are the regulars entered in the full WEC, which begins with the Sebring 1000 Miles on 17 March.

However the German Proton Competition squad, which has a WEC entry for one of two customer 963s due to race in the series this year, does not appear on the Le Mans list.

With delivery of the customer cars to Proton and the British Jota team not scheduled until the start of the week of round three of the WEC at Spa on 29 April, the former has opted to set back its entry.

The GTE stalwart is expected to focus on a test programme with its 963 prior to a likely debut at round five at Monza on 9 July.

Jota will race its car, entered under the Hertz Team Jota banner, at Le Mans. Its debut is planned for Spa.

Daytona 24 Hours 2023: Cadillac Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-LMDh: Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande, Scott Dixon

Photo by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images

Cadillac will bolster its one-car attack on the WEC by the Chip Ganassi Racing squad with the marque's two LMDhs racing in IMSA this year.

The Ganassi and Action Express Racing teams will thus both cross the Atlantic with their IMSA machinery to compete at Le Mans with a car now renamed the Cadillac V-Series.R.

The extra Ganassi entry — like the WEC car, it's entered under the Cadillac Racing banner — has IMSA full-timers Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande listed alongside Scott Dixon, who raced the car at the Daytona 24 Hours in January.

Jack Aitken, Action Express’s endurance driver in IMSA, joins Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims in the Le Mans debutant squad's Caddy.

Glickenhaus has again received a second entry to race alongside the Pipo-engined 007 LMH it will field in the full WEC.

Frenchman Franck Mailleux, who drove with the team at Le Mans in 2021 and ’22, is listed against the car.

Romain Dumas remains the only driver confirmed for the full Glickenhaus WEC entry.

The rest of the Hypercar category is made up of regular WEC entries from Toyota, Peugeot, Ferrari and Vanwall with already-announced driver line-ups.

A total of 24 cars, all ORECA 07s, have received Le Mans entries in LMP2, eight in the pro/am sub-class.

The 11 full-season LMP2 Gibson-powered ORECAs are joined by five automatic entries won in IMSA and the European and Asian Le Mans Series.

The TF Sport-run Racing Team Turkey squad, a regular in the ELMS since 2021, has received a Le Mans entry for the first time.

There are 21 cars entered in GTE Am, now the only GT class after the demise of GTE Pro at the end of last year.

The additions to the 14 GTE Am cars from the WEC include the Walkenhorst Racing squad, which will field a Ferrari 488 GTE Evo after claiming an auto invite by winning the GT class in February’s 2023 Asian LMS with a BMW M4 GT3.

The 2023 Le Mans entry list is completed by the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 based on a Next Gen NASCAR Cup racer that will fill the Garage 56 grid slot for a so-called ‘innovative car’.

The Hendrick Motorsports-entered Chevy will be driven by Jenson Button, Jimmie Johnson and Mike Rockenfeller, as announced at the Daytona 24 Hours in January.

Ten reserves have been listed, including the DragonSpeed LMP2 team with father and son Juan Pablo and Sebastian Montoya among the drivers of its ORECA and a GTE Am Ferrari from Risi Competizione.