The 62 car entry list for the 2021 Le Mans 24 Hours has been released by race organisers the ACO.
The entry includes the 33 full season entries from the 2021 FIA World Endurance Championship plus a number of teams utilising their automatic invitations through racing success in 2020 and, in the case of the Asian Le Mans Series, into early 2021.
2021 sees the first appearance of the new-for-2021 ‘Hypercar’ class with Toyota Gazoo Racing and Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus fielding a pair apiece of their GR010 Hybrid, and SCG 007 LMH cars respectively alongside the ‘grandfathered’ LMP1 for the Signatech Alpine team, their Alpine A480 Gibson an ex Rebellion R13, in total a five-car class for 2021.
In LMP2 the class numbers 25 cars. Joining the 11 car full season WEC entry are the automatic invitation cars from United Autosports (x 2), G-Drive Racing and PR1 Mathiesen, the latter invited as the representative team for Patrick Kelly the IMSA Jim Trueman Award winner for the best-placed gentleman driver in their LMP2 class.
In addition, there are entries granted by the ACO Selection Committee to IDEC Sport (x 2) a second G-Drive Racing Aurus, a second Oreca for Team WRT and a second too for High Class Racing and solo cars for SO24 By Graff, Duqueine and Panis Racing.
Racing Team India, with a Ligier, understood to be operated by Eurasia Motorsport is also listed.
And there’s a huge surprise with Risi Competizione making their LMP2 debut with an ORECA for Ryan Cullen and Oliver Jarvis.
GTE Pro sees a seven-car entry with the full season Porsche and Ferrari squads from the FIA WEC joined by the pair of factory Corvette C8.Rs (the car making its Le Mans debut after the team missed the race last season) plus the WeatherTech Racing Porsche 911 RSR from IMSA’s GTLM class.
GTE AM sees a 24 car entry with the 13 car full season WEC entry joined by Auto entries from TF Sport (a third Aston Martin for the UK-based team alongside their WEC customer efforts), another Porsche for Proton Competition and five additional Ferraris for Kessel Racing, Inception Racing, Iron Lynx, Rinaldi Racing and, surprisingly, for Herberth Motorsport.
In addition, there are entries granted by the ACO Selection Committee to Absolute Racing with a Porsche 911 RSR with HUB Auto Corse also fielding a Porsche.
JMW Racing and Spirit of Race are there too with Ferraris.
For the first time since 2016, there is set to be a ‘Garage 56’ entry for an innovative team as the La Filière Frédéric SAUSSET BY SRT41 ORECA 07 is listed with at least two of the drivers set to come from the Academy set up by quad-amputee Frederic Sausset for other drivers with physical impairments after his successful appearance at the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours.
Unusually the announcement today does not include a reserve list, DSC believes that, as with last year, the delay for the race until 21/22 August has meant that some late entries may still yet get to feature on a reserve list to be published later.
