By alley - Jan 5, 2016, 11:31 AM ET

IMSA: Ford confirms Bourdais for Daytona

Former Rolex 24 at Daytona winner Sebastien Bourdais has been officially confirmed tocomplete the driver lineup in Chip Ganassi Racing's pair of Ford GTs for this year's edition of the race.

The IndyCar ace, who triumphed in the Florida enduro outright with the Action Express Corvette squad in 2014, will contest the opening round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship on Jan. 30-31 in the GT Le Mans class Ford shared with Dirk Muller and Joey Hand. The sister car of Richard Westbrook and Ryan Briscoe will be co-driven by Stefan Mucke, who was today confirmed as part of Ganassi's World Endurance Championship line-up.

Ford reveals 2016 WEC lineup

The deal raises the prospect of Bourdais returning to the Le Mans 24 Hours for the first time since 2012 to race with Ganassi with either its WEC squad or, presuming they receive entries, its IMSA cars.

Le Mans-born Bourdais, who is expected to continue to race with the KV squad in IndyCar, has always stressed his intention to return to his home race and the U.S. schedule would allow for it, although he would be unable to take part in the official pre-race test two weeks before the 24 Hours.

Bourdais will sample the Ford, built to the new-for-2016 GTE regulations, at this week's Roar Before the 24 Daytona test.

A total of 54 cars are entered

for the test, starting on Friday, including 13 cars in the Prototype class and 11 in GTLM.

The biggest entry is in the GT Daytona division for GT3 machinery, which includes a full-factory car for Aston Martin Racing, among the 22 cars.

Originally on Autosport.com