Le Mans invites won – but not all will be taken up

The Spa 24 Hours-winning GPX Racing squad and 2016 British GT Championship title winner Optimum Motorsport were two of the teams that gained automatic entries for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours on the conclusion of the 2021 Asian Le Mans Series in the United Arab Emirates last Saturday. But only one of them will take up its guaranteed slot.

GPX and Optimum won places on the Le Mans grid for respectively finishing second and fourth in the GT standings after the four races, two in Dubai and two in Abu Dhabi. The British Optimum squad has confirmed that it will be going to Le Mans for the first time this year, but Dubai-based GPX has revealed that it will not be doing likewise.

The biggest problem facing the final wave of Le Mans invitees was that the entry for the big race scheduled on 12-13 June closed at midday French time on Tuesday.

“Time was too short to put together a package necessary to be able to perform at the level we want,” said GPX team principal Pierre-brice Mena. “But we still have the ambition to go to

Le Mans in the future.”

The GT class of the Asian series is run for GT3 rather than GTE machinery, but Mena stressed that sourcing a GTE car wouldn’t have proved problematical.

Optimum sealed its Le Mans berth with a Mclaren 720S GT3. Team boss Shaun Goff has revealed that he is forging “a collaboration with a team that has a GTE car” for its Le Mans assault. He couldn’t reveal the identity of the team or the manufacturer, but stressed on Tuesday morning that “the entry has gone in”.

The other two GT teams to gain auto invites to Le Mans via the Asian series were the Herberth Motorsport Porsche squad, which took the title with Alfred and Robert Renauer and Ralf Bohn, and the Rinaldi Ferrari team.

G-drive Racing (above) took the P2 title to ensure it will be back at Le Mans for a ninth season. A second and a fourth for Ferdinand Habsburg, Rene Binder and Yifei Ye in Abu Dhabi combined with their double win from the opening weekend to claim the title by three points from Sean Gelael. The Jota

ORECA driver claimed a double victory last weekend with

Tom Blomqvist after finishing second and fifth with Stoffel Vandoorne in Dubai.

United Autosports garnered a further automatic entry for winning the LMP3 title with Wayne Boyd, Manuel Maldonado and Rory Penttinen, giving the team a total of five LMP2 invites. It intends to take up two of them, which means that together with its full-season World Endurance Championship entry it will have three Oreca-gibsons at Le Mans.

The Le Mans entry is likely to be announced at the end of March.