JOTA Sport partners G-Drive Racing in WEC, ELMS

G-Drive Racing will team up with JOTA Sport in the defence of its FIA World Endurance Championship LMP2 title as well as a full European Le Mans Series campaign thanks to a new sponsorship deal.

JOTA Sport will run a new ORECA-Nissan 05 in the WEC under the team banner G-Drive Racing, while also entering a Gibson-Nissan 015 in the ELMS. The sponsorship agreement is set to last 12 months with both cars also having a new orange G-Drive Racing-branded livery.

JOTA Sport narrowly missed out on its defence of its LMP2 crown at the Le Mans 24 Hours last year by finishing runner-up to KCMG, while the squad finished third overall in ELMS in 2015.

This year team co-founder Simon Dolan, former Caterham F1 driver Giedo van der Garde and ex-Nissan LMP1 driver Harry Tincknell will team up in ELMS, with youngster Jake Dennis taking over from Tincknell for the prestigious Le Mans event. In the WEC its challenger will be driven by Roman Rusinov, Nathanael Berthon and a third unnamed driver who will be announced in the coming weeks.

JOTA Sport team principal Sam Hignett says his squad is delighted to team up with G-Drive after expanding its operations to full-time efforts in both the WEC and ELMS.

"2016 is an incredibly important year for JOTA Sport, one which will see our operation essentially double in size, as we not only take on the European Le Mans Series once again but also set our sights on the FIA World Endurance Championship," Hignett said. "In order to successfully compete in both major competitions, we have significantly increased the size of our team, invested in a vast amount of new equipment and, ultimately, dramatically increased our capacity as a commercial sports operation.

"G-Drive Racing offers a wealth of knowledge and experience in the global motorsport arena, which will no doubt prove invaluable to our team as we continue to grow our operation and strive for success throughout 2016 and beyond."