Photo: Chris Owens
Several junior single-seater stars are headed into the world of sportscars next year, and some have already made the move in the Asian Le Mans Series.
The 2023-24 ALMS season began this month with two four-hour races at Sepang, and there are three open-wheel racers currently in the top 10 in the standings.
In eighth place is Duqueine Team’s Carl Bennett, who has raced in lots of series this year. He started off in the Formula Winter Series, then had a points-free Spanish Formula 4 campaign so after five rounds stepped up to Eurocup-3 where he also failed to score.
In four United States F4 rounds he only scored points three times, but one of those instances was a win, and he picked up a podium from his two rounds in Brazilian F4. He will remain with Duqueine for next year’s European Le Mans Series.
One place behind him in the ALMS standings is Toby Sowery, who made the podium in one of his three Indy Nxt appearances this year. He has joined Algarve Pro Racing in Asia, and will also contest the Daytona 24 Hours with them.
Alex Garcia may have only come 20th in the 2023 FIA Formula 3 Championship, but he won ELMS’ LMP3 class and has now stepped up to LMP2 to prepare himself for the top level of prototype sportscars – Hypercars – next year.
The 20-year-old Mexican is driving one of Nielsen Racing’s LMP2 cars in ALMS, then will switch to Cool Racing to do the same in ELMS before joining Isotta Fraschini to debut its Tipo 6 LMH-C hypercar in the World Endurance Championship.
Next year WEC will replace its GTE class with a GT3 class, and United Autosports – co-owned by McLaren’s Formula 1 and IndyCar chief executive officer Zak Brown – has signed FIA F3 racer Gregoire Saucy to drive one of its McLaren 720S GT3 Evos.
Saucy dominated the 2021 Formula Regional European Championship, and in his two FIA F3 campaigns has claimed a pole and three podiums. Alongside his WEC programme in 2024 he will drive an LMP2 car for TDS Racing in ELMS.
For the IMSA Endurance Cup, which consists of the Daytona 24H, Sebring 12 Hours, Six Hours of Watkins Glen, the six-hour Battle on the Bricks race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Petit Le Mans, TDS has signed this year’s Indy Nxt runner-up Hunter McElrea to drive one of its cars.
Rival team Era Motorsport will run reigning Indy Nxt champion Christian Rasmussen in the Daytona 24H, while Christian Bogle – who came 11th in the Indy Nxt standings – is currently driving a BMW M4 GT3 for Project 1 Motorsport in ALMS.
Cool Racing will be part of the ALMS grid for the remaining rounds next year with a car that features FREC and FRegional Middle East podium-finisher Lorenzo Fluxa in its line-up. In ELMS he will then be in the sister car to the one being co-piloted by Garcia, and be sharing driving duties with Toyota’s Formula 2-bound Super Formula champion Ritomo Miyata.