French single-seater racer Esteban Masson will make his FIA World Endurance Championship debut at this weekend’s Bahrain 8 Hours with Kessel Racing.
The 19-year-old has competed in more than half of this year’s Formula Regional European Championship alpine season with Santeloc Racing and is a title contender in the Eurocup-3 series, but he has never raced in a sports car before. There wasn’t.
According to the latest version of Bahrain’s entry list, Masson will share the No. 57 Kessel Racing Ferrari 488 GTE Evo with Daniel Serra and Takeshi Kimura.
Masson, who finished second in Race 2 of this year’s Paul Ricard FRECA round, joins the lineup as a Silver-rated driver, replacing Scott Huffaker.
This will be Kessel’s second staff adjustment at a WEC round since Serra withdrew from the Fuji 6 Hours due to family reasons and was replaced by recently crowned Super Formula champion Ritomo Miyata.
Masson’s WEC debut will be the final race in the GTE-Am class before it is replaced by LMGT3 next season.
For AF Corse, Franck Desoutou will be competing in WEC for the first time in a year, driving the No. 21 Ferrari alongside Kay Cozzolino and Simon Mann.
The French bronze-rated driver competed in the full 2022 season alongside Gabriel Aubri and Pierre Laguez. Dezotou becomes Mann’s fifth Bronzeco driver this campaign, following Stefano Costantini, Diego Alessi, Julien Piguet and Hiroki Koizumi.
Other driver changes for the final race of the season include Ryan Brisco joining the Floyd Vanwall Racing team to replace Joao Paulo de Oliveira in Super GT, and Satoshi Hoshino at D’station Racing. This includes the addition of Australian player Liam Talbot in his place.