Will Stevens joins Manor WEC's two-car squad
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The Manor WEC team run by John Booth and Graeme Lowden will run two cars in the World Endurance Champsionship this year – and one of them will be driven by ex-Manor F1 racer Will Stevens.
Manor will run a pair of ORECA 05 LMP2 cars.
Press release:
Only a few weeks after confirming its entry into WEC, the team is now pleased to reveal the first in a series of announcements to be made between now and The Prologue.
Bringing strength, speed and an excellent working relationship with the team is former F1 driver, Will Stevens who competed in 20 Grands Prix as well as in Formula Renault and World Series by Renault. The 24-year-old British driver will make his sports car debut with Manor.
With an expanded driver line up, the team will run an additional ORECA 05 LM P2 in the FIA World Endurance Championship. All information relating to the driver pairings and completion of the team’s full driver line-up will be made in the near future.
John Booth, Team Principal
“Everything has moved very quickly since we first announced that we would be entering the 2016 World Endurance Championship. It is great news to be running an additional ORECA 05 LM P2, we can’t wait to get started with the season at The Prologue at the end of March.
It’s great that Will is joining the team, we know his talent and speed from working with him over the last few years in Formula 1 and we are all really looking forward to going racing with him.”
Will Stevens, Driver
“The opportunity to continue my relationship with Graeme and John was one that I was very pleased to accept. It gives me a great chance to explore endurance racing, be competitive and go racing with people I enjoyed working with last year so I’m looking forward to it.
“My objective is to have a number of top level career choices going forward, and to be able to gain experience in endurance racing will hopefully open up my career prospects. I want to keep very busy, enjoy my racing and do some winning and I’m confident that by working again with Manor in WEC I’ll achieve all of those things.”
Will they be able to race Le Mans with two cars though? The entry list and reserves list has already been confirmed…
Knowing the nature of Le Mans, they’ll probably find a way in somehow due to attrition and withdrawals.
Manor has 2 WEC seats, and all WEC entries automatically get Le Mans entries. So there will be 2 Manors at Le Mans, barring some fairly spectacular misfortune.
@alianora-la-canta Usually that is the case, but this is a rather late entry for the WEC, and the Le Mans entry list has already been settled. All 60 slots taken plus 10 reserves. They’re not going to bump a team out to favour Manor, so the best Manor can hope for is becoming an 11th reserve. According to Dailysportscar.com (a reliable source for all things WEC), Manor won’t have both cars at Le Mans. So looks like that second car will have to wait until 2017 to do Le Mans.
@jackysteeg OK, thank you for the correction :)
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