The 2022 WEC season promises great emotions, especially if they are proportional to the number of vehicles present in the championship. FIA and ACO have published the first provisional entry list of the WEC with a record participation with 39 vehicles divided into six hypercar, fifteen LMP2, five GTE in the LMGTE-Pro class and thirteen in the LMGTE-Am category. The incorporation of new competitors in three of the four classes makes the WEC has its biggest grid since the 2018-19 season, in which 36 cars competed on a regular basis. Last year there were eight fewer vehicles than the ones on this list.
Six are the confirmed entries in the queen class, although all with nuances. Toyota will have two units of its LMH with Ryo Hirakawa as a great novelty in #8. By your art, Alpine repeats with its LMP1, while Glickenhaus will only field an SCG 007 LMH to secure a place at Le Mans. Two will be the Peugeot 9X8 in contention, with numbers #93 and #94. It is not known when they will debut, but they will have to compete before the 24 Hours of Le Mans to have a place on their grid. Conversely, there is no trace of the ByKolles hypercar with the Vanwall logo that the German coach intended to put in contention.
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Fifteen are the registered LMP2 prototypes by 2022. Team Penske, Prema Powerteam and Vector Sport are three of the new structures. G Drive Racing returns after breaking its link with Algarve Pro Racing, while teams like Inter Europol, ARC Bratislava, JOTA or United Autosports, these last two with two LMP2, repeat in the series. It will also have two WRT prototypes, one under his own flag and another as manager of the RealTeam Racing project. The list of participants is completed by the prototypes of Richard Mille -women’s team-, Ultimate and AF Corse. There are only three Pro-Am entries in a ‘one-make’ class with fifteen Oreca 07-Gibsons.
In LMGTE-Pro the five expected vehicles will compete in the duel between the official Porsche, Ferrari and Corvette teams. The German brand will have two GTE, like the Italian. For its part, Corvette will compete with a single car. By last, the LMGTE-Am category repeats with thirteen participants, same as there were in 2021. In fact, a large part of last year’s projects continue in the series. Iron Lynx, Dempsey-Proton, Team Project 1 and TF Sport are the structures with two cars, while AF Corse will repeat with three vehicles, even after the withdrawal of Cetilar Racing. They complete the amateur category GR Racing’s Porsche and Northwest AMR’s Aston Martin -Paul Dalla Lana team-.