Wayne Taylor Racing will contest the Le Mans 24 Hours for the first time this year as part of a four-car Cadillac assault on the World Endurance Championship’s blue-riband event.
The maiden participation at Le Mans for a team that has won the Daytona 24 Hours four times has been confirmed along with a return of the Action Express Racing team with its Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh for a third consecutive season.
WTR and Action Express, Cadillac’s partners in the IMSA SportsCar Championship in North America, will join the two full-season WEC entries from the British Jota team, which has taken over from Chip Ganassi Racing as the General Motors brand’s representative in the series.
Confirmation that there will be four Caddys on the grid at Le Mans on 14-15 June came on Monday when race organiser the Automobile Club de l’Ouest published the full 62-car entry list for the race.
The WTR and Action Express crews are joined as additional cars on top of the regular 18 WEC entries by a third Porsche 963 LMDh fielded by the factory Penske team.
Porsche Penske Motorsport has taken up the automatic entry it claimed for winning last year’s IMSA title, which means it will have a trio of cars on the grid for the third year in succession.
The extra entries bring the Hypercar class entry list up to 21 cars at Le Mans. That is down from last year’s 23 when there was one more full-season WEC entry and four additional entries for the 24 Hours.
WTR has named Ricky and Jordan Taylor, the two sons of team founder Wayne, in its V-Series.R along with Filipe Albuquerque, who has been on the team’s books since 2021.
Action Express has listed full season driver Jack Aitken in its entry along with Frederik Vesti and Felipe Drugovich.
Vesti is contesting the enduros alongside his Formula 1 reserve role at Mercedes, while Aston Martin F1 reserve Drugovich raced for the squad at Le Mans last year and Daytona in the January just gone.
Earl Bamber, who is Aitken’s regular partner in IMSA, will be on duty for Jota at Le Mans.
Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr will race the additional Penske Porsche Motorsport entry at Le Mans for a third year in a row. The third driver is yet to be confirmed and PPM will have to bring in someone from outside of its regular eight-strong LMDh roster.
Pascal Wehrlein, who made his sportscar debut for the customer JDC-Miller team at Daytona, is believed to be one of the leading candidates.
The reduced Hypercar entry has resulted in one more car apiece in LMP2 and LMGT3 compared to last year.
There are now 17 cars, all ORECA-Gibson 07s, in the secondary prototype category, two up on the 15 to which the ACO committed when the class disappeared from the full WEC schedule ahead of the 2024 season.
Nine are entered in the Pro-Am sub-class, which demands a bronze-rated driver rather than a silver in the line-up.
The LMP2 field includes five invited entries gained for success in the European and Asian Le Mans Series.
They include the British RLR M Sport squad, which claimed its grid slot for winning the LMP3 class in last year’s ELMS and is returning to the 24 Hours for the first time since 2019.
Included in the field are two cars each from United Autosports and Inter Europol, winners in class at Le Mans in 2024 and 2023 respectively.
Algarve Pro Racing has named the 2023 F2 champion and Peugeot Hypercar reserve Theo Pourchaire in one of its pair of ORECAs as part of a full programme encompassing the ELMS.
The entry also includes the IDEC Sport ORECA fielded together with Hyundai Motorsport, as part of its so-called trajectory programme ahead of the start of sister marque Genesis’s LMDh project in 2026.
Jamie Chadwick is the only name in the car so far after ex-F1 driver Logan Sargeant dropped out of the programme.
There are three cars with auto invites in LMGT3, including the Sky Tempesta Ferrari 296 GT3 that claimed its entry for winning the GT World Challenge Europe Bronze Cup.
Its AF Corse-run car is now entered under the Ziggo Sport Tempesta banner.
The ACO has also revealed a six-car reserve list including a Porsche 963 from Proton Competition and second entries from the British Vector Sport and JMW Motorsport teams competing in LMP2 and LMGT3 respectively.
