WEC: Taylor drops 2015 Le Mans plan, but Scuderia Corsa set

TUDOR Championship frontrunner Wayne Taylor Racing will not take up its guaranteed entry for the Le Mans 24 Hours in June, the team has announced.

WTR was awarded one of the discretionary entries allowed to the IMSA series for Le Mans and had plans to race in the LMP2 division in a deal involving the French Larbre Competition squad. Team boss Wayne Taylor, whose Daytona Prototype outfit finished third in last weekend's Rolex 24 at Daytona, explained that he had decided against pursuing his Le Mans plans.

"It was all too much to put together in a short time and I didn't really want to do it as WTR in cooperation with another team; if I go, I want to do it as WTR," he told AUTOSPORT.

Taylor said he still had ambitions to take his team to Le Mans, where he competed 13 times as a driver. He explained that his focus was now on finding son Ricky Taylor, a factory Chevrolet driver, a seat for Le Mans. The 25-year-old has driven for Larbre for the past two years, aboard a Chevrolet Corvette C6.R GTE Am car in 2013 and a Morgan-Judd/BMW LMP2 last year.

CORSA FERRARI WILL MAKE TRIP

The Scuderia Corsa Ferrari team, which received the other TUDOR Championship guaranteed entry, has firmed up its plans to race at Le Mans in the GTE Am class.

"We are going and have paid [the entry fee] in full," team owner Giacomo Mattioli said. He explained that the California-based team would run a Ferrari 458 Italia itself rather than forging a partnership with another team. Townsend Bell and Bill Sweedler, who race for the team in the GT Daytona class, have been confirmed as drivers.

Mattioli said that the team was aiming to have "an all-American lineup" and that it was seeking a silver-rated driver from the U.S.

Corsa is to send the Ferrari, which Sweedler and Bell raced in the 2013 American Le Mans Series with Alex Job Racing, to Italy to be updated and that its technical staff will attend the Silverstone WEC opener in April on a fact-finding mission.

Originally on Autosport.com