18 Cars are listed to take part in the post-season FIA WEC ‘Rookie’ test at Bahrain International Circuit on Sunday 7 November.
Whilst there have been headline announcements already over some of the drivers at the test, Sebastien Ogier and Charles Milesi at Toyota, Jamie Chadwick, Alice Powell and Lilou Wadoux at Richard Mille Racing, and Laurents Hörr at either AF Corse or Porsche, there are plenty of additional storylines from the entry. With more names set to be added in the coming days.
Hypercar
All three cars entered in the season finale are set to run at the test with WEC-nominated rookie Charles Milesi joined by Mike Conway in the #7 Toyota GR010 and Sebastien Ogier joined by Sebastien Buemi in the sister #8 car.
Nico Lapierre is slated to drive the #36 Alpine.
LMP2
Six LMP2s are set to run with the aforementioned trio of female drivers in the #1 Richard Mille Racing Oreca.
The #21 DragonSpeed USA Oreca sees Ben Hanley and Juan Pablo Montoya joined by Juan Pablo’s 16 year old son and 2021 Italian and ADAC F4 race Sebastian Montoya.
JOTA field a single car, the #28, for ex WEC race winner Jazeman Jaafar, the Malaysian heavily tipped to be a returnee for 2022. Team WRT field Robin Frijns and Sophia Floersch in the #31 car, the Belgian team on the hunt for silver-ranked talent for 2022.
The #29 Racing Team Nederland and #70 RealTeam racing cars, both operated by TDS Racing, have no drivers yet named.
GTE Pro
All four cars in the GTE Pro field are set to take part in the test, WEC nominee Laurents Hörr is not yet listed, he will drive the Championship winning car from either Porsche or Ferrari.
At Porsche, the #91 and #92 911 RSR-19s list their three-driver crews from the 8 Hours of Bahrain. AF Corse/ Ferrari list Alessandro Pier Guidi in the #52 488 GTE Evo with father and son British pairing Peter and Simon Mann, and long-time AF Corse customer Christoph Ulrich in the #51.
GTE Am
There’s plenty of interest here with five cars set to run, three Aston martins and two Iron Lynx Ferraris: Iron Lynx currently name a mixed bag of drivers in their #60 and #85 Ferraris: The #60 fields Brazilian Stock Car racer and ex GP3 driver Bruno Baptista and Argentinian touring car racer Franco Girolami.
The sister #85 car welcomes Australian Indy Lights and FIA F3 racer Alex Peroni and Team WRT GT3 racer Benji Goethe.
All three full-season GTE AM Astons are set to run too:
All three see full-season WEC man (from the #777 D’Station car, Andrew Watson listed.
The #33 TF Sport car also lists Porsche one-make race Florian Latorre who raced at Le Mans this year with Proton Competition, and Scott Huffaker (listed under his birth name as Gregory) who, after a Team USA single seater scholarship has more recent form in LMP3 and LMP2 machinery in IMSA competition, taking the Sebring 12 Hours class win with PR1 Mathiesen this year. That’s likely to be a move to assess whether he’ll be a neat fit into the soon to be available Silver-ranked seat for the #33.
The #98 Aston Martin Racing Vantage sees Nicolai Kjaergaard and Roman de Angelis, both candidates for the Aston Marin Young Driver Academy, listed alongside GT3 racer David Pittard, the BMW regular recently set the NLS race lap record in a BMW M6 GT3. Kjaergaard’s most recent racing has been with Garage 59 in GT World Challenge Europe whilst Canadian racer de Angelis is in contention for the IMSA GTD title with Heart of Racing. He is also the 2019 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Champion.
Finally, the #777 Vantage will see Watson joined by 2020 Aston Martin young driver award winner Valentin Hasse-Clot joined by 2021 candidate Kenton Koch and fellow IMSA LMP3 racer Dylan Murry.
