The entry list for the 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans was unveiled on the 9th February in Paris and twelve ELMS teams have been selected to participate in the world’s most famous endurance race in June. Ten LMP2 and two LMGTE Am, including all three 2017 ELMS champions who received automatic invitations due to their titles, will be on the starting grid at 3pm on Saturday 16th June.
The 2017 ELMS Champions G-Drive Racing have an entry at Le Mans, with James Allen as the first driver and will also have a second entry with the n°26 driven by Roman Rusinov. It will be the second time James Allen has raced at Le Mans after his debut last year.
2017 LMP3 ELMS Champions, United Autosports will also be at Le Mans. The Anglo-American team received an invitation in the LMP2 class following their success in 2017 and will enter two cars with Phil Hanson and Hugo De Sadeleer as the lead drivers.
The Italian team Cetilar Villorba Corse will be back in Le Mans for the second time in a row with an all Italian line-up, while Panis-Barthez Competition will enter Le Mans for the third time, with Timothée Buret as the lead driver.
The French teams Graff (that will be named Graff-So24 in Le Mans) and Idec Sport have one entry each for the 86th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Finally, we will also find the n°25 Ligier JS P217-Gibson of Algarve Pro Racing and the n°35 SMP Racing Dallara on the starting grid of the biggest Endurance race in the world.
In the LMGTE Am class, two cars have been selected. The 2017 ELMS champions and winner of the 2017 24 Hours of Le Mans, JMW Motorsport, has an entry with its Ferrari F488 GTE as well as Ebimotors, the Michelin Le Mans Cup winners in the GT3 class, the Italian team racing a LMGTE class Porsche 911 in this year’s race.
Four other ELMS cars are on the reserve list: Spirit of Race, High Class Racing, Repsol Racing Engineering and Krohn Racing.
Idec Sport has decided to retire its car from the reserve list to focus on the one that have been selected.
The start of the 24 Hours of Le Mans will be given on the 16th of June at 15h00. Before that the 2018 ELMS season will officially start in Le Castellet on the 9th and 10th of April with the Official Test. This will be followed by two 4-hour ELMS races in France on 15th April at Le Castellet and Italy at Monza on 13 May before the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.
Fonte: www.europeanlemansseries.com