Entries Announced for 1000 Miles of Sebring Season-Opener

The FIA World Endurance Championship has issued the entry list for its return to Sebring International Raceway in March for the opening round of the 2022 season.

A total of 37 cars are signed up for the 1000-mile or eight-hour race, with the number being two shy of the full season total after Peugeot elected to skip the event to focus on the pre-homologation testing of its LMH car.

It leaves four entries in the top category, with two Toyota GR010 Hybrids going up against the non-hybrid Glickenhaus 007 LMH — which is set for its first race since the 24 Hours of Le Mans last August — and the Alpine A480 Gibson grandfathered LMP1 car.

The Glickenhaus will be driven by Olivier Pla, Romain Dumas and Ryan Briscoe who were members of the program during its partial WEC season in 2021.

Briscoe and Dumas previously raced the No. 709 Glickenhaus together while Pla was in the No. 708 entry, which has been retained as the American team focuses on a single-car effort. Alpine’s full Hypercar driver lineup is yet to be announced.

None of the five GTE-Pro crews are using three-driver lineups, after eight of the 11 entries in the category for the WEC’s last visit to Sebring in 2019 had more than two drivers.

There are several to-be-announced lineups in GTE-Am, although one of the two Team Project 1 crews has been finalized.

American tech entrepreneur Brendan Iribe’s Inception Racing outfit is set to tackle the full WEC season, with a Project 1-operated Porsche 911 RSR-19 driven by Iribe and his regular GT3 co-drivers Ollie Millroy and Ben Barnicoat.

Inception has contested GT3 races around the world with McLaren 720S GT3s run by Optimum Motorsport. It also made its 24 Hours of Le Mans and GTE-Am debut last year with an Optimum-prepared Ferrari 488 GTE Evo for the current full-season trio.

The Inception drivers all compete full-time in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, which is holding the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on the Saturday after the WEC race.

Other IMSA full-season or Michelin Endurance Cup drivers on the latest WEC entry list include Oliver Jarvis, Sebastien Bourdais, Felipe Nasr, Antonio Fuoco and Ben Keating, as well as Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway.

United Autosports yesterday announced that Alex Lynn would be missing the WEC season-opener to focus on his IMSA DPi drive with Cadillac Chip Ganassi Racing.

This article was updated to correct the date for the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, which takes place on Saturday, March 19.