The Heart of Racing Enters Remainder of 2023 WEC Season

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The Heart of Racing Enters Remainder of 2023 WEC Season

Spa, Belgium (24 April 2023) – The Heart of Racing (HOR) takes over the Paul Dalla Lana Northwest AMR FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) entry for the remainder of the 2023 season. The team will make its WEC debut this weekend at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. 

Piloting the No. 98 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GTE will be HOR team principal Ian James, IMSA GTD PRO class race winner Alex Riberas, and GT racer Daniel Mancinelli. 

James will be stepping away from driving duties in the HOR SRO Pirelli GT4 America series entry after winning last year at Watkins Glen International. Most recently James won the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in January of this year. Riberas currently competes in the No. 23 HOR Aston Martin Vantage earning two wins for the team in the 2022 season. Mancinelli earned a third place finish at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last fall in the Fanatec GT World Challenge America presented by AWS in the pro-class. 

HOR will also be making their debut in the Aston Martin Vantage GTE. The GTE has the same lightweight aluminum chassis as the GT3 and GT4 cars they are used to, but the car will have an AMG derived 4-0-liter turbocharged V8 engine in it. 

“The Heart of Racing team has had ambitions to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the FIA WEC for some time,” said James. “We are an ambitious group and to add WEC to what we have been fortunate to achieve in our other programmes over the past three years is an honor. Going for the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona/24 Hours of Le Mans double is very exciting. I’d like to take the opportunity to wish Paul well in the future, and to thank him for giving us the chance to take over his entry for the rest of 2023. It will be a baptism of fire in Spa, but we hope to continue the successful heritage of the No. 98 plate in WEC.”

Due to James stepping away from the remainder of the SRO Pirelli GT4 America season, IMSA GTD class champion Roman De Angelis will take his place to co-drive with Gray Newell in the No. 24 Heart of Racing entry. 

The Heart of Racing will make their WEC debut starting Thursday with practice. The green flag will drop for Saturday’s six hour race at 6:30am ET. Watch the race via WEC’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@FIAWEC). HOR will also have SRO on track this weekend at NOLA Motorsports Park with two races starting on Saturday at 1:55pm ET.