Glickenhaus yet to make a call on entering Fuji, Bahrain WEC races

The US entrant has revealed that a decision is still pending on its participation in the Fuji and Bahrain races in September and November respectively with its solo full-season Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 Le Mans Hypercar.

It hangs on the Glickenhaus Racing team finding sponsorship to move forward with its programme, according to team founder Jim Glickenhaus.

“We’ve made no decision; we can’t say we will be at Fuji and Bahrain because we are still working on it,” he told Autosport.

“What needs to happen is that we get a serious sponsor that allows us to do the rest of this year and move into 2024, as well as to develop an evo version of the car so that we can remain competitive.

“We are close to doing that, but we’ll either get the backing we need or we won’t.

“I think we have a huge potential that a sponsor would be able to exploit.“

Glickenhaus dropped out of the 2022 WEC this time last year, which followed its most competitive performance since joining the series in 2021 when it lost a clear chance of winning at Monza courtesy of a turbocharger failure.

It didn’t subsequently commit to returning for this year until December.

#708 Glickenhaus Racing Glickenhaus 007: Romain Dumas, Olivier Pla, Nathanael Berthon

Photo by: Eric Le Galliot

Glickenhaus insisted that missing the final two races again would not prejudice the team’s chances of gaining a WEC entry next season.

“We remain on good terms with the WEC and we have kept them informed,” he said.

“They have been very supportive of our efforts.”

A decision on the participation of Glickenhaus in the last two races could be imminent.

The freight leaves for the Fuji 6 Hours on 10 September by sea next Wednesday.

Glickenhaus reiterated his stance that competing in the WEC offers less value to his fledgling road car marque, Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, than racing in the Nurburgring 24 Hours and the Baja 1000 with the street versions of its SCG004C GT car and Boot off-roader.

It remains too early to talk about drivers for Fuji and Bahrain should the team travel to Asia for the last leg of the WEC, explained Glickenhaus.

He stressed that the Ryan Briscoe remains part of the team even though he was replaced by Nathanael Berthon for last weekend’s Monza 6 Hours.

Briscoe will be on duty for Glickenhaus at this weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed where he will drive the 007 owned by HK Motorcars that raced as #709 at the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Berthon came into the line-up of #708 alongside Romain Dumas and Olivier Pla at Monza after making his debut with the team in the second car at Le Mans last month.