Saturday will see round four of the FIA World Endurance Championship, with the championship heading to the USA’s Circuit Of The Americas headlining the “Lone Star Le Mans” event alongside the USA’s own TUDOR United Sportscar Championship and Continental Tyre Sportscar Challenge.
The WEC will see 31 entries spread across four classes. In LMP1, the manufacturers of Audi, Porsche and Toyota continue to duel for honours in the LMP1 Manufacturers championship, with just one point separating Toyota from Audi for the lead of the championship. In terms of entries in LMP1, six factory entries will headline the event, with the only driver change being Toyota Racing’s reserve driver, Mike Conway entered in car #7 in place of an absent Kazuki Nakajima.
In terms of LMP-L, The race will see the debut of the Lotus T129, piloted this weekend by James Rossiter, Christophe Bouchut and Lucas Auer. The new entrant will add much needed competition, with the LMP1-L regulations attracting only a lone pair of Rebellion Racing’s Rebellion R-ONE entrants to date. It’s hoped that the regulations will see more entries join as the season progresses and into the future.
Following a huge LMP2 entry list at Le Mans, which brought entrants from both the European Le Mans series and the TUDOR united Sportscar championship for Le Mans in June, a more normal service for 2014 is resumed here, with five LMP2 cars entered, four of which are full season entrants. The fifth however is an additional and highly welcome entry from the Extreme Speed Motorsports (ESM) team, fielding a HPD ARX 03B, alongside TUSCC commitments for this weekend, a welcome return for the HPD chassis to the WEC.
G-Drive Racing meanwhile, a team run by the OAK Racing organisation will run the Onroak Automotive designed Ligier JS-P2. The chassis having previously made it’s debut at June’s 24 Hours of Le Mans meanwhile another of the new Ligier chassis will see it’s debut in the Tudor United Sportscar Championship run by OAK Racing themselves.
GTE Pro will see seven cars in the class, with AF Corse, Porsche AG Team Manthey and Aston Martin Racing fielding two entries each with an additional COTA only single car entry coming in the form of GM’s factory Corvette Racing team, piloted by Ricky Taylor, Jordan Taylor and Tommy Milner.
Finally GTE AM, will see additional entries to the usual WEC entry list with the Krohn Racing team entering a Ferrari 458 Italia, as well as the return to the WEC of 8 Star motorsports alongside entries from Aston Martin Racing, AF Corse and Prospeed competition.
Both Races will be aired live on Fox Sports 2 this Saturday, with the TUSCC 2.5 hour race due to start at 12:30 ET, which will feature a 51 car entry list across four classes. The WEC’s 6 Hours of Circuit of Americas will begin at 18:00 ET, running into the midnight hours.
Full entry list – WEC / TUSCC
