Small American presence at LeMans as most USCC teams know they cannot compete

There won’t be a huge American team contingent at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans because the France owned Tudor USCC series does not compete at that level, which is a lower cost dumbed down version of sportscar racing.

Only four teams, with six cars – Corvette Racing, SRT Motorsports, Dempsey Racing-Proton and 8Star Motorsports – will race under the U.S. flag.

Corvette and SRT are the obvious ones in GTE Pro, as they are GT Le Mans competitors in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship.

Corvette returns to Le Mans with its pair of new C7.Rs racing at Circuit de la Sarthe for the first time, while SRT seeks to improve on its 2013 results of eighth and ninth with the improved, now-tried-and-tested SRT Viper GTS-Rs.

Jan Magnussen and Oliver Gavin are the two drivers nominated for Corvette’s two cars, as the team plans to return identical driver lineups for 2014.

Viper has Rob Bell, its third driver on the No. 93 in the TUDOR Championship, and Jeroen Bleekemolen, who races the lone GT3-spec SRT Viper GT3-R there, as its two nominated drivers.

In GTE Am, Dempsey is back too for an encore, after nearly making the podium in 2013 with a lineup of Patrick Dempsey, Joe Foster and Patrick Long. Dempsey, unsurprisingly, was the nominated driver for the team’s No. 77 Porsche 911 RSR.

Meanwhile 8Star Motorsports shifts numbers – it will now be 90 instead of 81 as it was in 2013 – but will again fly the U.S. banner with Enzo Potolicchio leading the driving contingent.