Le Mans Auto-Invites Granted After Portimao Finale

Five automatic invitations to next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans have been extended following last weekend’s European Le Mans Series season finale in Portimao.

The entry slots were granted to the championship winners in all four classes, in addition to the runner-up in the LMP2 standings.

Four out of five invitations for the 94th running of the French endurance classic are for the LMP2 category, with VDS Panis Racing and Inter Europol Competition securing their entry berths for finishing first and second in the overall standings, respectively.

AO by TF, meanwhile, has been granted an invitation for winning the LMP2 Pro-Am championship.

LMP3 champions CLX Motorsport, for their part, unofficially already secured their invitation at Silverstone after clinching the title with a race to spare as part of a dominant campaign that saw the team win every race they finished.

The final automatic invitation to come out of the ELMS season went to newly crowned LMGT3 champions TF Sport after Hiroshi Koizumi, Rui Andrade and Charlie Eastwood won the title with their No. 82 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R in a closely contested finale.

By capturing two automatic invitations, the Tom Ferrier-led squad is set to have at least four cars on the Le Mans grid next year, as the team is also expected to continue with its two-car Corvette effort in the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Meanwhile, American bronze-rated driver PJ Hyett has now effectively secured two invites, with his LMP2 Pro-Am driving for AO by TF title adding to the LMP2 invitation he captured for taking the Jim Trueman Award in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

In an interesting twist, the second IMSA-specific nomination could end up also involving TF Sport, as Orey Fidani took home the Bob Akin Trophy for the best-placed Bronze driver in the WeatherTech Championship’s GTD class.

When Fidani took the auto-invite for last year’s edition of Le Mans, the No. 13 AWA Corvette he raced in the event was run with support from TF.

Fidani announced earlier this month that he will compete with his own 13 Motorsports operation in the WeatherTech Championship, for which AWA will provide support, and has already indicated that he plans to take up the auto-invite to race at Le Mans with an unchanged driver lineup that also features Matt Bell and Lars Kern.

Another invitation that was recently given out was extended to Kessel Racing for winning the Bronze Cup title in GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS.

Two additional auto-invites will be handed out to the LMP2 and GT champions of the Asian Le Mans Series, which kicks off at Malaysia’s Sepang International Circuit on Dec. 13-14.