EuroNASCAR announced that 31 cars from 16 teams have registered an entry for the 2023 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series season, as revealed in yesterday’s provisional Entry List announcement.
A total of 31 cars from 16 teams will be participating in the 2023 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series season, as revealed by the official provisional Entry List release that was announced by series organizers Team FJ yesterday.
The 31-car Entry List for 2023 is six cars less than the 37-car provisional Entry List that the series received last year, but it doesn’t mean that the quality will tank as some of the series’ most established teams will continue to duke it out for the biggest prize in European stock car racing.
Reigning four-time Teams Champion Hendriks Motorsport headlines the provisional Entry List with the confirmation that the team will continue to race the No. 7 and No. 50 teams.
Martin Doubek will continue to race the No. 7 Ford in both classes, while Liam Hezemans will step up to the top class in the No. 50 Toyota. Liam’s replacement in the EN2 seat of the No. 50 Toyota are rumored to be announced in the near future.
Two-time Teams Champion PK Carsport remained as a single-car team, fielding just the No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro for the returning Anthony Kumpen and a currently unannounced driver in EuroNASCAR 2.
The provisional Entry List’s announcement meant the reigning EuroNASCAR champion Alon Day will not be retained as one of the team’s drivers. As of the writing of this article, the Israeli’s status for 2023 is unknown.
Fellow powerhouse team CAAL Racing will enter the No. 54, No. 56 and No. 88 teams in 2023, further solidifying the announcements that CAAL have made in March to confirm their whole driver roster for the new season.
The provisional Entry List also solidifies Racingfuel Motorsport’s plans, who had previously announced that they will continue their EuroNASCAR participation with an unchanged team line-up of the No. 58 and No. 94 Chevrolet Camaro’s.
SpeedHouse, who finished second with Alexander Graff last year, is set to be the largest team to enter the new season as the provisional Entry List confirms that they will retain all four entries that they had last year.
The No. 14, No. 33, No. 40, and No. 64 entries will continue their chase for SpeedHouse’s first top class title.
Race Art Technology will be building up from the success that Giorgio Maggi and Claudio Remigio Cappelli had achieved in 2022 by expanding into a two-car team. The team retains the No. 18 team while adding a new one in the form of the No. 34 team.
Another team to confirm an expansion is the debuting Team Bulgaria, who will add the No. 89 to their roster in 2023. With Team Bulgaria now having the No. 89 and No. 90 teams, this meant that EuroNASCAR’s first Balkan team would effectively take over the entries that Not Only Motorsport had raced for the past few years.
On the other side of the scale, two teams are undergoing a downscale in their efforts. The first is Academy Motorsport, who will race as a two-car team in 2023.
Alex Caffi and Federico Monti’s team will retain the No. 1 and No. 5 teams for the new season, leaving the No. 2 car to be consigned to the history books.
The other team to downscale their team is Team Bleekemolen, who will field three cars this year. The team will lose the No. 23 and No. 44 cars that were entered in a joint effort with Finnish team Iceboys, but gained the No. 66 team to complement the No. 69 and No. 72 teams.
On the topic of new entries, Team Japan NEEDS24 are set to make their full-time debut in the series with the No. 74 Toyota Camry. Kenko Miura’s team, which is the first Japanese team to enter the EuroNASCAR series, had previously competed as a one-off entry at Circuit Zolder last year.
Team Japan will be the sole Asian team on the grid as Buggyra ZM Racing will be leaving the series. The Emirati team had ended their 2022 participation early to prevent an injury to hamper Aliyyah Koloc’s 2023 Dakar Rally efforts after the team expressed their dissatisfaction over the driving standards shown in the round at the Czech Republic.
Also leaving the series is Shadow Racing Cars, who will be leaving after a three year stay as both Shadow and MK1 Racing Italia. Shadow’s presence as the sole “factory” team in EuroNASCAR with their self-entered Shadow DNM8’s will be sorely missed.
For the remainder of the teams, their plans for 2023 are not changed from what has been announced previously. 2018 Teams Champion RDV Competition will continue to field just one car, with the No. 3 Chevrolet set to be driven by both Frédéric Gabillon and Paul Jouffreau.
With Onofrio Veneziani leaving the series to focus on the Italian GT Championship, Racers Motorsport will be rebranded back to Vict Motorsport as Dario Caso will now act as the team’s sole full-time owner. The team will retain the No. 8 and No. 9 entries that they had last year.
Double V Racing also retained their No. 27 Ford Mustang, while fellow Italian squad The Club Motorsport retained both the No. 55 and No. 65 teams. Marko Stipp Motorsport retained their No. 46 and No. 48 teams, while the debuting Bremotion team’s No. 99 entry will act as their sole entrant for the 2023 season.
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