The full season entry list for the 2023 World Endurance Championship has been published, and features 13 cars in the top Hypercar class.
Toyota return to defend their 2022 title with the all-star line-up of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa. The second GR010 Hybrid will be driven by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez, who won the title together in 2020 and ‘21.Their main 2022 rival Alpine, which raced a grandfathered LMP1 car, are gone, but Toyota now face opposition from several other manufacturers.
The most anticipated new entry is Ferrari, who have filled their 499P prototypes by promoting several of their GT stars and also giving a second chance to their Formula 1 reserve driver Antonio Giovinazzi after he failed to land an F1 seat for 2023.
Cadillac, who are planning to enter F1 with Andretti Autosport but have that team’s arch rival Chip Ganassi Racing running their Hypercar, have brought 2017 WEC champion Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Richard Westbrook across from their IMSA line-up.
ByKolles Racing meanwhile has had its Vanwall-branded car accepted as an entry and with a crew consisting of Formula V8 3.5 champion Tom Dillmann, World Touring Car ace Esteban Guerrieri and 1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve. Despite his race-winning experience in prototype sports car racing, Dillmann is rated as a Gold driver by the FIA rather than a Platinum like his team mates and the majority of the Hypercar entry list.
Jota Sport’s line-up is led by Euroformula Open and European Le Mans Series champion Yifei Ye. Proton Competition have two-times WEC GTE Pro champion Gianmaria Bruni on their books. Their team mates are yet to be confirmed.
Peugeot have two full-time entries and both are being run in-house. In the first car is former F1 driver Paul di Resta, IMSA LMP2 champion Mikkel Jensen and two-times FE champion Jean-Eric Vergne, and the second car will be piloted by 2013 World Endurance champion Loic Duval, 2016 WEC LMP2 champion Gustavo Menezes and DTM star Nico Muller, a continuation of the line-up the team finished 2022 with.
The final Hypercar entry is Glickenhaus Racing. The American team so far only have two-times Le Mans 24 Hours winner Romain Dumas signed to drive their car.
The official entry list published today also included 11 LMP2 entries and 14 in the LMGTE Am class. The new WEC season will begin at Sebring in March.
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World Endurance Championship
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Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
11th January 2023, 11:23
How many of these cars will compete at all events of the season?
A person somewhere
11th January 2023, 12:18
According to reporting elsewhere the 13 listed are “full season” entries, with at least some additional cars expected to be announced for Le Mans. Of course we shall see if it pans out that way.
Sam Crawford
11th January 2023, 12:24
Are they showing any of this on TV? Surely the only real way to get people interested in this is to have a TV deal
Sam
11th January 2023, 13:28
It was £30 for a full year of live streaming and full replays on the WEC website. I prefer this model to paying a lot more money to Sky.
Andrew W
19th January 2023, 9:12
Last season all the races were live on Eurosport, which is included in the Sky Signature package, the basic one with Sky Q.
Unable to currently confirm if this is true for this season
MichaelN
11th January 2023, 19:21
There is a streaming service, if you can figure out how the website works. Or if it works at all.
The WEC is really holding itself back with a poor online presence. Its website is a collection of linked-to PDFs and half-translated pages. It’s unfortunate, because the racing is often quite fun.
Imre (@f1mre)
12th January 2023, 9:46
Eurosport. Eurosport’s streaming service (Eurosport or Discovery+ depending on where you live) has live coverage of all races. (or had until last year)
Mark in Florida
11th January 2023, 14:17
I’m excited to be going back to the Sebring 1000 mile race. I enjoyed it a lot last year.
This year four cars are competing in the top class. A Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrids, the Alpine Elf Matmut A480-Gibson and a Glickenhaus 007 LMH. The cars last year were a lot slower than the imsa DPI cars. I wonder how they will compare to the new LMDH cars. It will definitely be interesting for sure. I always enjoy meeting the drivers and talking with some of them. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere and being able to walk the team garages is a great bonus.
some racing fan
12th January 2023, 1:01
I’ll be there too. Was originally going to Daytona but Sebring is just way more interesting this year. (Plus it’s a better event.)
Mark in Florida
12th January 2023, 13:16
some racing fan We will be in the grand stand box over the hot pits. My brother and I go every year, but for the last 3 years we’ve bought tickets to the Celebrity Cruises box. We still like to walk over to turns 5/6. There’s going to be a lot of people there again.
some racing fan
14th January 2023, 21:15
Ok cool. A friend of mine is getting an RV and is going to be by Turns 5 and 6. I like to walk around a bit; usually for the start I like to be at Turn 1 somewhere.
MichaelN
11th January 2023, 19:23
Appreciate the increase in WEC coverage. It’s a fun series which only looks to get better in the coming seasons.
Minardi (@gitanes)
12th January 2023, 0:59
Looking forward to both IMSA and WEC this year. In the case of Porsche, there are a few drivers who will be competing in their first ever race in top class machinery at the 24 hours of Daytona. And the cars will be tested very heavily in that race too. It will be must-watch as will Sebring 1000 mile race in March.
DonSmee (@david-beau)
13th January 2023, 9:31
WEC would make a good Netflix series….