2018/2019 FIA WEC Prologue: 35 cars for Le Castellet shakedown

The FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) returns to Le Castellet, France, for this season’s official test. A field of 35 cars is expected to take advantage of the 30 hours of track time available over the weekend.

After organising its pre-season run at Monza, Italy, in 2017, the FIA WEC returns to Le Castellet for the pre-2018/2019 ‘Super Season’ Prologue. Twenty-seven of the 35 cars in Provence will appear on Michelin rubber.

Toyota Gazoo Racing has taken two TS050 Hybrid prototypes to the south of France, with Conway, Buemi, Würz, Davidson and Lopez slated to share the driving. There will also be three BR Engineering cars (run by SMP Racing and Dragonspeed), plus two CEFC TRSM Racing Ginetta-Mecachromes and the ByKolles Enso CLM P1/01, while Rebellion will have one of its R13s at the test. All these new non-hybrid LMP1s will be fitted with Michelin tyres.

In addition, there will be seven LMP2 prototypes, namely two Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca07-Gibsons, plus similar cars run by TDS Racing and Dragonspeed, along with a Dallara (Racing Team Nederland), a LigierJSP217/Michelin (Larbre Compétition) and an Alpine A470 (Signatech-Alpine).

All the championship’s LM GTE Pro teams will be in attendance, making a total of 10 cars, all on Michelins. The list features the new BMW M8 GTE and Aston Martin Vantage, plus the more familiar Ferrari 488 GTE, Ford GT and Porsche 911 RSR. Gimmi Bruni is making his FIA WEC comeback, in the colours of Porsche.

There will also be nine LM GTE Am cars at the Prologue, namely four Porsche 911 RSRs (Team Project 1, Dempsey-Proton Racing and Gulf Racing), three Ferrari 488 GTEs (Spirit of Race, Clearwater Racing and MR Racing) and two Aston Martin Vantages (AMR, TF Sport).

The lights go green at 10am on Friday, April 6.