34 Entries for Petit Le Mans

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

A total of 34 entries are set to take part in next weekend’s Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, in the season-ending round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

The ten-hour enduro will also serve as the fourth and final leg of the Michelin Endurance Cup.

The entry list, released by IMSA on Wednesday, marks the smallest field for the ten-hour enduro since 2013, a race that also featured 34 cars in the pre-merger era.

The DPi class will see a 11-car grid, thanks to the return of Juncos Racing’s Cadillac DPi-V.R for Will Owen, Rene Binder and Spencer Pigot, who will make his first start with the team in sports car racing competition.

Mike Conway, meanwhile, has been confirmed as the third driver in the No. 5 Mustang Sampling Cadillac DPi, while Matthieu Vaxiviere is set to make his return to Wayne Taylor Racing’s Cadillac for the first time since the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March.

As previously announced, Graham Rahal will take the place of Alexander Rossi in the No. 7 Team Penske Acura ARX-05, with Rossi set to take part in the Bathurst 1000 in Australia that weekend. Simon Pagenaud is back in the team’s sister No. 6 Acura, meanwhile.

Both Olivier Pla and Timo Bernhard will return to Mazda Team Joest, with Eric Curran back in Whelen Engineering Racing’s Cadillac and Romain Dumas completing the lineup in CORE autosport’s Nissan DPi, in the team’s final race in the top class.

Philipp Eng and Colton Herta will be third drivers in BMW Team RLL’s entries in GT Le Mans, which features a boosted nine-car field thanks to the return of Risi Competizione and its 24 Hours of Le Mans class-winning lineup of James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Daniel Serra.

Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon return to Ford Chip Ganassi Racing in the final factory outing for the Ford GT, while class champions-elect Porsche will again have Fred Makowiecki and Mathieu Jaminet as third drivers of its retro-liveried Coca-Cola Porsche 911 RSRs.

The GT Daytona class features just 12 cars, and only one additional Endurance Cup entry in Montaplast by Land Motorsport, which will be the sole Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo on the grid with drivers Christopher Mies, Ricardo Feller and Daniel Morad.

PPM will make its first start since the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen with its Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo for Brandon Gdovic, Don Yount and a third, to-be-confirmed driver, while a number of other drivers make their return to teams since the last Endurance Cup race at Watkins Glen.

As expected, Compass Racing will not take part in the race with its McLaren 720S GT3, which is not eligible for Endurance Cup competition this year due to McLaren’s automotive partnership agreement with IMSA, while Park Place Motorsports will be absent after being unable to source a spare Porsche chassis following its weekend-ending accident at Laguna Seca last month.

Of note, Black Swan Racing, which was slated to take part in the race with its Porsche, is also not listed.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John