Tony Kanaan replaces injured Sebastien Bourdais in Ford Le Mans team

The 2013 Indy 500 winner, who raced one of the Ganassi Ford GTs in this year's Daytona 24 Hours, will line up with team regulars Dirk Muller and Joey Hand in the #68 entry in which they took class honours at Le Mans last year with Bourdais.

Kanaan has been brought back into the US arm of the Ganassi sportscar squad for the World Endurance Championship blue riband on June 17/18 after Bourdais sustained hip and pelvic fractures in a crash in his Dale Coyne Racing Dallara-Honda during qualifying for the Indy 500 earlier this month.

Ford Performance global director Dave Pericak said: "It's certainly not the ideal situation and we're heartbroken that Sebastien won't be back to defend his victory, because we know how much that race means to him."

Kanaan, a former overall winner at Daytona with Ganassi, will be making his Le Mans debut this year and has previously spoken about his desire to take part in the French enduro.

"It's an honour to be named as part of the GT line-up for Ford Chip Ganassi Racing," said the 42-year-old, who visited the Le Mans race for the first time last year.

"This race has been on my bucket list for a long time.

"It's obviously an unfortunate situation that brought us to this point with Sebastien's injuries, but I'm going to do my best to take his place and try to help win this amazing race for the team again."

Kanaan is scheduled to race at the Detroit IndyCar round this weekend and is set to miss the official test at Le Mans, but he is permitted to contest the race without previous experience of the track because he is a platinum-rated driver.

He drove the Ford GT he shared with Richard Westbrook and Ryan Briscoe for more than seven hours at Daytona.