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Triple threat: Heidfeld, Buemi and Sarrazin to take on Daytona

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Swiss squad Rebellion Racing have announced their full driver line-up for January’s 24 Hours of Daytona – with three Formula E racers taking part. Renault e.dams’ Sébastien Buemi, Mahindra’s Nick Heidfeld and Venturi’s Stéphane Sarrazin will all drive Rebellion’s Oreca prototype at the event, alongside reigning WEC champion Neel Jani.

The Rebellion squad are no stranger to Formula E drivers – Heidfeld, Nicolas Prost and Nelson Piquet Jr shared a car during the 2016 WEC season, while both Daniel Abt and Fabio Leimer have driven for them in the past. The team has now announced their intention to compete in the 2017 North American Endurance Cup, a set of four endurance races taking place between January and October, with a star-studded driver line-up already confirmed for the race in Daytona on January 28th-29th.

Heidfeld is known well to the team, and Jani drove for them prior to his switch to Porsche. However Buemi and Sarrazin – both Toyota factory drivers in WEC – will make their debuts for the Rebellion squad in Florida. Nonetheless, both are endurance racing veterans with Buemi winning the 2014 WEC title and Sarrazin one of the most experienced drivers in the sport. What’s more, Heidfeld and Sarrazin were Formula E team-mates at Venturi in 2014-15, while Buemi and Jani both drove for Team Switzerland in the 2006-07 A1GP season. Therefore, teamwork between these four high calibre drivers should be a given.

The entry list for Daytona still has many gaps left to fill, but there are also three other names confirmed thus far who are familiar to Formula E fans. Dragon Racing’s Loïc Duval will compete for the similarly-named DragonSpeed squad, also in the top Prototype class; Antonio García (formerly of NextEV/Team China Racing) will race for Corvette as usual in the GT Le Mans class; and ex-Amlin Aguri racer Katherine Legge will compete in the GT Daytona class for Michael Shank Racing.

As well as being the first round of four in the North American Endurance Cup, Daytona is also the first of twelve races in the 2017 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the USA’s top endurance racing category.

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Images courtesy of Rajan Jangda

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