Toyota this week confirmed an unchanged line-up across its entries, with Brendon Hartley to join Sebastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa in the #8 GR010 Hybrid.
The #7 will be led by veterans Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway with Nyck De Vries.
Jota has also confirmed its two-car factory-backed Cadillac line-up, which features Earl Bamber.
Bamber was part of the Cadillac program run by Chip Ganassi Racing and has been retained by the US marque despite switching teams.
Bamber, a two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, will join Sebastien Bourdais and Alex Lynn.
The sister entry will feature 2009 Formula 1 champion Jenson Button, Norman Nato, and Will Stevens.
Buy tickets
Jota entered the FIA World Endurance Championship as a Porsche customer team but in its third year will switch to the Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh.
“Joining Jota is going to be a great step for the Cadillac project,” said Bamber.
“They have really proven what they can do with the Porsche and just early interactions with the team have been positive.”
Bamber will contest the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA SportsCar Championship with Cadillac.
He’ll partner Jack Aitken at Action Express Racing with Frederik Vesti joining the team for endurance races.
“With me doing both WEC and IMSA, hopefully, we can accelerate their learning process,” said Bamber.
“We were quick with Chip Ganassi Racing the last few races of the ’24 season and hopefully we can transfer knowledge from that project and continue our strong showing at the end of the year and taking their knowledge from their project and combining all that into winning races in WEC in 2025.
“The continuity of Alex, Seb and myself having driven the cars for a couple of years in IMSA and WEC will really lead to a formidable line-up.”
Scott Dixon has bolstered his IndyCar program with Chip Ganassi Racing, leveraging a technical partnership with Meyer Shank Racing.
Dixon will join Tom Blomqvist and Colin Braun at the Acura team for the full suite of endurance races, with the addition of Felix Rosenqvist for the 24 Hours of Daytona.
Alex Palou will partner Renger van der Zande and Nick Yelloly in the other Acura ARX-06.
“I’m really looking forward to running the Rolex this year,” said Dixon.
“I have almost joined Meyer Shank Racing and Mike a couple times in the past, but it didn’t work out.
“I’m really excited to join Acura MSR and their partnership with HRC makes it easier, there are a lot of familiar faces and people that I have worked with over the years.
“That’s also true on the Meyer Shank side as well with a lot of people who I have worked with earlier in my career.
“A lot of familiar faces on the driver side too with Felix (Rosenqvist), Tom (Blomqvist), Colin (Braun) and obviously I was teammates last year with Renger, so I’m really looking forward to that side of it.
“Goal number one is just to win and hopefully we can do that out of the gate at Daytona. It’s a fun race and I love doing the endurance races.
“I’m just really excited to get going and from what I’ve seen so far it’s quite the outfit and excited with what Acura has done.”
Teams will test at Daytona International Speedway on Friday (AEDT). The entry list includes Matt Campbell at Porsche Penske Motorsport.
New Zealand’s Hunter McElrea will test with TDS Racing in LMP2. Josh Burdon will also feature in the Riley entry in LMP2.
Tom Sargent is entered in GTD Pro with AO Racing in a Porsche 911 GT3 R. It’s the first appearance for Sargent in IMSA, having raced with GMG in GT World Challenge America.
Discussion about this post