WEC reveals 36-car entry for Sebring 1000 Miles season-opener
A total of 36 cars will take part in the Sebring 1000 Miles World Endurance Championship opener later this month.
The entry for the race on 18 March is down on the 37 cars listed on the provisional entry published last month after Russian entrant G-Drive Racing’s withdrawal from international sportscar racing last week.
The field for the second edition of the 1000-mile fixture on the undercard of the Sebring 12 Hours IMSA SportsCar Championship round is three cars fewer than the 39 on the full-season WEC entry, which includes the two Peugeot 9X8 Le Mans Hypercars that are now expected to race for the first time at Monza in July.
That means the Hypercar class entry is made up of just four cars: the two Toyota GR010 HYBRIDs, one Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 LMH and the Alpine-Gibson A480 grandfathered LMP1 car.
The LMP2 entry now stands at 15 rather than 16 cars after G-Drive’s withdrawal in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the conditions laid down by the FIA on teams and drivers from Russia competing in international motorsport.
Each of the five cars in GTE Pro — two cars each from Porsche and Ferrari and a single Chevrolet — will contest a race with a maximum duration of eight hours with two drivers in each car as expected.
That contrasts with the approach of some manufacturers at the inaugural Sebring 1000 Miles in 2019: Ferrari along with Ford and BMW and Aston Martin with one of its cars, which are all no longer competing in the WEC, ran three drivers.
The WEC returns to Sebring for the first time since 2019 after the past two editions of the 1000-mile race were cancelled due to COVID-19
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
The German Project 1 team has listed Dane Mikkel Pedersen in its #46 Porsche 911 RSR, but has yet to nominate the mandatory bronze-rated driver.
David Pittard, who was announced as part of the NorthWest AMR Aston Martin line-up in January, is missing for the entry list alongside car owner Paul Dalla Lana and Nicki Thiim.
Track action at Sebring begins this weekend with the two-day official pre-season prologue test.
The Sebring 1000 Miles meeting kicks off with two sessions of free practice on Wednesday, 16 March.
The race starts at 12:00pm local time on Friday, 18 March, which is four hours earlier than in 2019.
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