Glickenhaus will not return to WEC in 2024 with Le Mans Hypercar

Team founder Jim Glickenhaus has revealed to Autosport that he does not intend to file an entry for next year’s championship ahead of the closing date on 20 November.

The news follows the team’s decision to again skip the Asian leg of the WEC made up of Fuji in September and Bahrain in November with the Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 entered for the full season.

Glickenhaus suggested after the team was absent from the Fuji entry list that it would only continue in the series if sponsorship was found for a 2024 campaign.

Finding the necessary sponsorship isn’t realistic, as Glickenhaus told Autosport: “No, we won’t be entering - it doesn’t make sense for us.

“To be competitive we’d need to do an evo version of the car and to run two of them.

“That’s not viable for a privateer: the only way we could do it would be with sponsorship or if a customer wanted to run a programme with our car.”

He also pointed out that the priority for his Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus company was now making road-going vehicles, including the 004 sportscar based on its Nurburgring 24 Hours racer.

“We have a certain capacity and we have sales up to that amount, but even if we could build more, racing in the WEC isn’t going to help us sell them.

“For our little company competing in the WEC just doesn’t make sense.”

#708 Glickenhaus Racing Glickenhaus 007: Romain Dumas, Olivier Pla, Nathanael Berthon

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

A return to the German enduro on the Nurburgring-Nordschleife is on the cards at some point with the SCG 004C that last contested the race in the SP-X class in 2022, Glickenhaus stressed.

“We will go back to the ‘Ring one day, because we would be promoting what we sell,” he said.

Glickenhaus said he believes the team is retiring from the WEC with an enviable record, which includes a podium at Le Mans in 2022.

“We were a legitimate effort and we did just great for a privateer,” he said.

“We got on the podium in 2022 and this year we beat the likes of Porsche and Peugeot [by finishing sixth and seventh] — it really doesn’t get any better than that.

“We were an important part of the championship when they needed us.”

The Glickenhaus 007 developed by Podium Advanced Technologies in Italy began racing in WEC from the second round of the championship at Portimao in the first season of the Hypercar era in 2021.

It went on to finish fourth at Le Mans that year after a close battle with the Alpine A480 grandfathered LMP1.

The following year the 007 driven by Richard Westbrook, Ryan Briscoe and Franck Mailleux finished best of the rest behind the Toyotas at the head of Glickenhaus 3-4 result.

Glickenhaus notched up a further three podiums with the 007 and two pole positions across its three seasons in WEC, and was looking good for victory at Monza last year before a turbo failure intervened.