Despite a significant reeling in of auto-invitations, with just one invitation now set to be offered for the team winning the GT3-based GT class, DSC is now confident that entries for the 2022 will come close to, or even potentially exceed, the record levels of last season.
In one regard that’s no surprise. The entry for the 2021 Seres was directly impacted not only by the ongoing transport and logistics challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also by the very specific impacts both of restrictions on entry to the UAE and travel between Dubai and Abu Dhabi and of the then looming risk that the UAE would fall onto the ‘Red list’ for major European nations, forcing personnel to quarantine in hotels on arrival in their home nations.
Indeed that proved to be the case for those returning to the UK!
This year those risks, whilst still an outside possibility, have diminished very significantly.
In the wake of the announcement today of a first ever Asian Le Mans Series effort from High Class racing, at present the entry looks set to attract a relatively small LMP entry with LMP2 looking likely to draw potentially slightly fewer cars than last year’s Championship, (which saw a 7 car entry) , though, remarkably, almost all of the LMP2 prospects for 2022 did not enter last season in the class.
ARC Bratislava have already confirmed a run in LMP2 Pro-Am with their Ligier JS P217.
DSC is tracking a number of potential additional LMP2 programmes with ORECA machinery but has confirmed that Algarve Pro Racing/ G-Drive will not return to defend their 2021 title.
In LMP3 CD Sport have already announced their intentions to return and are likely to be joined by a handful of other European squads, including at least one new to the Series with some chassis variety in the class looking likely.
A number of prospective LMp entries though have not come to fruition with concerns about tight logistical deadlines ahead of the 2022 European Le Mans Series.
The GT class though looks set to be very well populated – and may well exceed the 19 car entry of 2021: Herberth Motorsport (Porsche), Inception Racing (McLaren) and Rinaldi Racing (Ferrari) can be assumed to be entered in order to validate their 2021 auto invitations to Le Mans.
At least four teams including new entrants Bullit Racing and the returning D’Station Racing are understood to be set to commit Aston Martin Vantage efforts.
At least one BMW M4 GT3 looks set to race with the likely return of Walkenhorst Motorsport and DSC believes that two teams new to the Series are set to bring Mercedes AMG entries to the UAE too
A multi-car Ferrari effort from AF Corse is believed to be likely too with other significant teams already in the process of confirming GT class entries
