The Brazilian will fill the vacancy at the factory Action Express Racing team for the French enduro on 15-16 June and join Pipo Derani and Jack Aitken, the team’s full-season drivers in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, in the #311 Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh.
Drugovich has landed a factory drive in the Hypercar class after taking his first steps in sportscar racing this year in the European Le Mans Series.
He joined the Vector Sport LMP2 squad for his first race campaign since winning the 2022 Formula 2 Championship, but it was made clear from the outset that he wouldn’t be racing the British team’s ORECA-Gibson 07 at Le Mans.
Action Express team manager Gary Nelson revealed that Drugovich had been “on our radar for a couple of years”.
“After watching him race a sportscar in the ELMS recently, we finally got a chance to meet him and work with him in some simulator testing,” he explained.
“We were impressed by his maturity, discipline and knowledge. Next, we took Felipe to a track test, where he shared our car with Pipo and Jack.
“We are very excited to take the next obvious step and enter Felipe alongside Pipo and Jack at Le Mans. His record speaks volumes.”
#311 Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Pipo Derani, Alexander Sims, Jack Aitken
Photo by: Marc Fleury
Drugovich described the chance to race for Cadillac and Action Express at Le Mans as “the most important opportunity in my racing career up to now”.
“The Le Mans 24 Hours is impossible to define in words, such is its magic and importance for cars in general and motor racing in particular,” said the 23-year-old, who is a two-time winner of the Le Mans Virtual Esports event.
“I barely touched the magic of Le Mans twice winning the virtual editions — now I am going to plunge into it for real. What a privilege having another dream come true.”
Drugovich takes a berth filled by Tom Blomqvist in the IMSA series: he is the Action Express team’s endurance driver for the long-distance races at Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen, Indianapolis and Road Atlanta.
Cadillac has now filled its full driver line-up for its three-car Le Mans assault made up of its regular solo WEC V-Series.R and its two IMSA entries.
Current IndyCar champion Alex Palou is joining Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn in the #2 Ganassi-run Cadillac Racing WEC car, while Scott Dixon teams up again with Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande in the team’s IMSA entry, #3.