LE MANS, France — The hyperlink between IMSA and the ACO extends to the headline race of the FIA World Endurance Championship — the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
A robust quantity of IMSA opponents made the journey to the Circuit de la Sarthe to compete within the 24-hour endurance race traditional.
It’s not the one IMSA componentry of the race week in Le Mans, France; a number of IMSA-sanctioned sequence drivers will compete in Le Mans assist races, together with the Michelin Le Mans Cup’s Highway to Le Mans and Ford’s Mustang Invitational.
The headliners, although, are within the FIA WEC’s Hypercar class, which permits for each Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) and Le Mans Daytona h (LMDh) specification prototype automobiles to compete for general honors throughout each IMSA and the FIA WEC.
Many of the full-season IMSA top-class prototype drivers will make the journey to Le Mans, together with final yr’s Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) championship profitable staff, whereas two different IMSA entrants garnered computerized invites for his or her efforts in 2024.
Three IMSA entrants – Porsche Penske Motorsport, Nick Boulle and Orey Fidani – acquired computerized invites to the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans from their 2024 IMSA successes.
Porsche Penske Motorsport secured a slot for the No. 4 Porsche 963, pushed by IMSA full-timers Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr alongside Pascal Wehrlein, courtesy of the staff’s 2024 GTP class championship achieved by Nasr and Dane Cameron.
IMSA acknowledges the top-scoring Bronze-rated drivers in Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) and Grand Touring Daytona (GTD) with the Jim Trueman Award and Bob Akin Award, respectively. Boulle secured the Trueman Award profitable the LMP2 title in 2024, driving the No. 52 Inter Europol by PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA LMP2 07. Fidani was the Akin Award winner in GTD aboard his No. 13 AWA Corvette Z06 GT3.R.
Boulle, who races with United Autosports USA in 2025 IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup races, returns to Inter Europol for Le Mans. He’ll share the No. 34 ORECA LMP2 07 with Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer and Luca Ghiotto as a Professional/Am entry throughout the LMP2 class.
Fidani has a better automotive to observe; his identical No. 13 AWA Corvette entry alongside IMSA co-drivers Matt Bell and Lars Kern. It shifts liveries from its regular black and gold colours to a placing pink and white honoring the staff’s Canadian roots.
Tandy and Nasr (GTP) and Fidani, Bell and Kern (GTD) additionally received this yr’s Rolex 24 At Daytona and are amongst a number of drivers throughout the three Le Mans courses who can double up with each 24-hour race wins this yr (extra on that in a bit).
Tandy and Nasr additionally sit on the precipice of historical past if they will win Le Mans to finish an unprecedented single season sweep of the normal endurance sports activities automotive racing “Triple Crown” at Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans.
“You assume it could be completely out of this world to have the ability to win the three ‘Triple Crown’ races in a single season. However we have a look at it at present and the stuff that’s occurred already this yr is simply fairly unbelievable. So why not?” Tandy mentioned. “It might simply be it could be an incredible factor that might be within the historical past of books endlessly, after all.”
Two further IMSA GTP automobiles head to Le Mans after being awarded an invite by the choice committee: the pair of Cadillac V-Collection.R automobiles fielded by Cadillac Whelen (Motion Specific Racing) and Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing.
This would be the Whelen entry’s third straight journey to Le Mans, and has a comparatively younger lineup of Jack Aitken, Frederik Vesti and Felipe Drugovich slated to drive the staff’s No. 311 Cadillac. Drugovich can be the Aston Martin Method 1 reserve driver.
For WTR, it’s a primary journey for the household effort with Wayne Taylor and sons Ricky and Jordan Taylor, the latter two sharing the staff’s No. 101 Cadillac with Filipe Albuquerque.
It’s been a very long time coming for the group, having had a winter of change with the shift again to the Normal Motors household after a four-year interval and starting the logistical prep for this race.
“After they requested me to use for the Le Mans entry, I used to be actually pleasantly and fortunately shocked that that they accepted us,” Wayne Taylor mentioned. “(WTR Vice President, Normal Supervisor) Travis Hogue on our staff has completed a very good job of getting the logistics and every part collectively, and we’ve been working with individuals in Europe as nicely.
“So far as persons are involved, there’s lots of people going, in all probability about 80 individuals. (Cadillac Hertz Workforce) JOTA has helped us in an enormous approach in addition to Cadillac, and I consider we’ve bought every part underneath management proper now. It will likely be every week of constructing, and I believe we are able to deal with it fairly nicely.”
Whereas almost 100 drivers who’ve began a minimum of one 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race rely within the 62-car, 186-driver 24 Hours of Le Mans entry checklist, the best share of full-season IMSA drivers racing in France come from the GTP class. A minimum of 18 of the 22 full-season IMSA GTP drivers are racing at Le Mans.
Porsche Penske Motorsport’s quartet of Tandy, Nasr (No. 4 Porsche 963), Mathieu Jaminet (No. 5) and Matt Campbell (No. 6) seem, though are break up amongst all three Porsche 963s.
All 4 Cadillac WTR drivers will race too, with the 2 Taylors and Albuquerque racing collectively.
In the meantime, final yr’s Le Mans LMP2 polesitter Louis Deletraz shifts to the No. 199 AO by TF ORECA LMP2 07, which he’ll share with final yr’s IMSA GTP champion Dane Cameron and AO Racing co-founder PJ Hyett – who share “Spike,” AO’s in style, dragon-liveried LMP2 automotive within the WeatherTech Championship.
Cadillac Whelen’s different full-season driver, Earl Bamber, is in one other Cadillac for Le Mans: the No. 38 Cadillac Hertz Workforce Jota entry he races throughout within the FIA World Endurance Championship.
BMW M Workforce RLL drivers Dries Vanthoor (No. 15) and Sheldon van der Linde (No. 20) resume with their FIA WEC staff, BMW M Workforce WRT, aboard their BMW M Hybrid V8s.
Aston Martin THOR Workforce drivers Ross Gunn (No. 007) and Roman De Angelis (No. 009) be part of the respective WEC lineups there, Gunn as a part of an all-British No. 007 Aston with De Angelis becoming a member of fellow Aston GT graduates Alex Riberas and Marco Sorenson within the No. 009.
After which there’s Acura Meyer Shank Racing w/Curb-Agajanian, which sees all 4 of its GTP drivers at Le Mans, break up amongst 4 completely different LMP2 automobiles.
The No. 60 Acura ARX-06 pair of Colin Braun and Tom Blomqvist will probably be within the No. 24 Nielsen Racing ORECA (Braun) and No. 37 CLX Pure Racing ORECA (Blomqvist).
In the meantime the No. 93 Acura ARX-06 duo of Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly will shift to the No. 22 United Autosports ORECA (van der Zande) and No. 43 Inter Europol ORECA (Yelloly).
The 4 full-season GTP drivers not racing at Le Mans are BMW’s Marco Wittmann and Philipp Eng, and JDC-Miller MotorSports’ Gianmaria Bruni and Tijmen van der Helm.
There are additionally a bevy of different IMSA drivers competing at Le Mans, most of whom are shifting from their WeatherTech Championship staff to a different one throughout the three courses at Le Mans.
