Sixteen former Formula 1 drivers are on the Le Mans 2026 entry list, giving this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans an unusually deep layer of grand prix pedigree. The race begins on Saturday 13 June at 3pm BST, with 186 drivers spread across Hypercar, LMP2 and LMGT3.

The biggest concentration is in Hypercar, where 13 of the ex-F1 names are set to race. Two more are entered in LMP2 and one in LMGT3, a spread that turns the world’s most famous endurance race into a reunion of drivers who once belonged on grand prix grids.

At the front of that group is Robert Kubica, last year’s winner. Kubica helped Ferrari to a third successive victory in 2025 for AF Corse and will again drive the No.83 AF Corse Ferrari alongside Yifei Ye and Phil Hanson. It is a familiar line-up for a driver whose career took a different route after he was due to join Ferrari in Formula 1 in 2012, before a rallying crash in early 2011 changed everything.

Kamui Kobayashi brings the kind of record that makes the Le Mans field look even stronger. He made 75 starts in Formula 1 with Toyota, Sauber and Caterham, then won Le Mans in 2021 in the first year of Hypercar and added six other podiums at the race. He will share the No.7 Toyota TR010 with Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway.

De Vries gives the entry list another layer of intrigue. He arrived at Le Mans after a short Formula 1 spell that began with a points-scoring stand-in debut at Monza in 2022, but his full-time run with AlphaTauri ended after 10 rounds in 2023 when results were not there. He already has Le Mans pace, though, finishing second in 2024 with Kobayashi and Conway in the same Toyota.

For Le Mans, that mixture matters. The race is not just drawing former F1 names for nostalgia; it is filling its top class with drivers who have already raced, won and been judged at the highest level of single-seater sport. By Saturday afternoon, the only number that matters will be whether those 16 ex-F1 drivers can turn pedigree into another 24 hours of clean, fast running.