The 37 car full-season entry for the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship features an array of headline stories, with a stacked top Hypercar class and more variety in the new LMGT3 class than has featured at any point hitherto in the WEC’s history.
This includes some brand new additions to WEC competition, alongside the return of BMW, absent on the WEC since the end of the M8 GTE programme in 2019, and Alpine, returning to top class competition with its A424 Hypercar after a year’s sabbatical in LMP2, plus Ford, back on the grid with Proton Competition’s new Mustang GT3s for first time since the retirement of the Ford GT.
First up, Lamborghini. The Italian supercar manufacturer set to debut its SC63 Hypercar in 2024 alongside a pair of Huracan GT3 Evos in LM GT3 with Iron Lynx and the Iron Dames.
It will be a return to World Championship level GT competition for the brand for the first time since 2012, the final season of the FIA GT1 World Championship, ironically held that year for GT3 spec machinery. That year the brand’s honour was upheld by Reiter Engineering with a pair of Gallardo LP 600+ GT3s.
At Le Mans Lamborghini’s racing cv will be revived for the first time since a GT1 effort with JLOC in 2010.
Also in the top class is revived Italian marque Isotta Fraschini, set to join the WEC for the first time. There is a first appearance for the brand at Le Mans on the agenda too for the Michelotto-built, and now Duqueine-operated, Tipo 6 Competizione.
Whilst the Isotta brand will be new to World Championship competition, the same is fundamentally not the case for our next WEC newcomer: Mclaren.
McLaren has, of course, long been a contender in Formula 1, and in GT racing was, together with Lamborghini, a part of the 2012 FIA GT1 World Championship, with Hexis Racing’s MP 4/12C GT3s. The outfit finished runner up in the Teams Championship with Stef Dusseldorp and current Porsche factory Hypercar racer Fred Makowiecki taking second slot in the Drivers Championship too.
At Le Mans in June the pair of United Autosports’ Mclaren 720S GT3 Evos will see the brand return to the race for the first time in the 21st century. McLaren’s last representative was in 1998, when two long-tail McLaren F1 GTRs raced under the Gulf Team Davidoff McLaren banner. One was a thinly disguised sighting mission for Joest Racing and Audi Sport, the other running in EMKA livery for the late and much lamented Steve O’Rourke, Tim Sugden and Bill Auberlen.
The final new brand is new to ACO rules racing, as Lexus joins the LMGT3 class of the WEC with AKKODI ASP Team. The ageing RC F GT3 has enjoyed (IMSA) title-winning success in North America as recently as last season, but precious little so far in Europe and on the global stage. Jerome Policand’s crack squad will be looking to change that!
