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.
There will be four of the new Porsche 963s, and run by three different teams. Team Penske are running two ‘factory’ entries in affiliation with Porsche, and their line-up includes the likes of WEC GTE Am class champion Kevin Estre, Formula E’s Andre Lotterer and one of Porsche’s leading GT stars Laurens Vanthoor.
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…
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