Unfortunatly Van Merksteijn Motorsport will not be there. It’s a shame but Peter van Merksteijn did his job to good in it’s first season and win the Le Mans Series and Le Mans, so he did get his goal in his first season.

Peter will be racing the Dakar Rally in ‘09

Penske Racing will never go to Lemans because they can’t win overall.

Penske wont race anywhere unless someone else picks up the tab. Im not ripping him, just sayin…
I also think its astonishing that all the P2 invites go to teams running RS Spyders yet we’ll be lucky to see two of them actually start at LM. (Horag and Essex)

Two Spyders are better than 0, how about the GT1 class next year there won’t be a GT1 class after the Lemans race, unless the current teams running GT1 go to the FIA-GT series. Or go to GT2.

Penske was at Le Mans with Ferrari 512s. LMP2 in LMS is looking much better in 2009.

LMP2 looks like a 1 car race… come on the Porsche RS Spyder…

I think Intersport and Bell Motorsport get automatic entries because they were second in class in the overall standings of their respective series.

First and second in class at the end of the season in the LMS, ALMS and FIA GT get invites.

First and second in class at Sebring and Petit Lemans get invites

And first and second in class at Lemans the previous year get invites.

Does anyone know or have any idea how much Intersport would charge a gentleman driver to race at LeMans?

Penske is doing fine just racing in Indy and Nascar. The American favorites. Though I wish NASCAR would disappear. If he felt enough Yanks were interested in LeMans he would probably build his own Le Mans prototype chassis. Or if he really wanted he could field a competitive entry in F1. He can do it all.

And were he to race any chassis he could transform it into a winner with his supremely talented pit crews. So of course he would be doing you a favor so it’s only right that he charges.

Motor Trend was comparing David Richard of Prodrive to Roger Penske. But Penske is waaaay ahead of David Richards.

Penske’s racing organization is like Pescarolo, Prodrive, and Oreca all put together and a bit more.

Dyson should get an entry for coming second in Sebring, and Highcroft should get one for being second in the P2 final season standings in the ALMS.

So yes there should be an ARX-01B in there.

Penske’s nascar team isn’t much to write home about.

Highcroft won’t be at Le Mans nor will any Acuras be at Le Mans in 2009.

Sebring does not give you an automatic entry to Le Mans, Petit Le Mans does.

Audi Sport North America and Corvette Racing both won Le Mans and Petit Le Mans. Even though they also won their classes in the ALMS the runners up (Intersport and Bell Motorsports) were given the invitation by the ACO as no more than 2 entries per team are accepted.

Mind you that this is only the list of teams that will be getting an easy entry into the 24 Hours if wanted. If Van Merksteijn doesn’t sell his Porsche they can always use their entry for another Porsche team or run just Le Mans. So more than likely several teams on this list will be no-showers (like Penske).

Penske just runs the NASCAR operation because it’s easy sponsorship money, and helps him promote his massive network of car dealerships.

True Sebring does not give automatic entry. My mistake.

Bell Motorsports didn’t even try to keep up with the corvettes in the ALMS. They were resigned to their fate.

Last year when Horag racing entered the Maserati for a few races they outqualified the Corvette in one race and were faster in practice many other times. They were trying.

The Bell team could’ve been more competitive. The owner is very wealthy (as you might have noticed the car didn’t have any sponsorship, all out of pocket funds). So he could’ve easily hired higher caliber drivers and Purchased upgrade parts from Prodrive.

About Acura, it’s not a sure thing that they won’t be at LeMans. If they end up giving Audi the business in the ALMS next year they will seriously look into an invitation. Besides the ACO will kiss their feet if they did attend.