24 Hours of Le Mans

FIA GT, Le Mans and LMS driver updates!

With the dates of the opening round of the 2009 FIA GT and FIA GT3 Championships at Silverstone and the second round of the Le Mans Series at Spa-Francorchamps coming closer news regarding driver line-ups and teams comes in several times a day. Here is the lates news in brief.

Just a couple of days ago during a press conference at Spa-Francorchamps Stéphane Lémeret and Olivier Muytjens were confirmed on the ARC Bratislava-Kaneko Saleen S7R. With their own regular Saleen S7R unavailable for Spa the car would be replaced by the Full Speed Racing Saleen S7R.

On Tuesday that Saleen had gone from the list as well, which meant the number of Belgian drivers taking part in their home race has been reduced to 0. The total number of entered cars for the Le Mans Series round stays on 51 as Prospeed Competition has entered a Porsche 997 GT3 RSR for Paul Daniels and Markus Palttala. A third driver could be added to the line-up. The car is the one that James Watt Automotive ran for Daniels in 2007 and 2008.

JMB Racing meanwhile confirmed Manuel Rodrigues will race for them in the 1000KM of Spa-Francorchamps as well as the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Markus Palttala and Jos Menten are currently listed as the two drivers of the DKR Engineering Corvette C6.R in the Silverstone round of the FIA GT Championship. Both drivers were unable to confirm the news on Tuesday evening, but were quite certain that a decision would be made on Wednesday. To be continued…

Already covered on Planetlemans: Porsche Junior drivers Martin Ragginger and Marco Holzer will also race in FIA GT, while Tiago Monteiro and Soheil Ayari will join Team Oreca Matmut AIM at Le Mans.

In FIA GT3 more and more seats are taken up, the number of TBA’s getting fewer every day.

Check out the latest entry lists for the LMS at Spa-Francorchamps, FIA GT and FIA GT3 at Silverstone and the Le Mans 24 Hours!