The upcoming Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup season will commence with an impressive 53-car entry at next weekend's Monza 3 Hours.
Over half the grid – 30 cars – will be in contention for overall race honours with all-professional driver lineups.
A group of 17 Pro/Am cars and five all-amateur entries complete the impressive list.
Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup Entry List: Monza
McLaren factory GT drivers Rob Bell and Côme Ledogar begin their Endurance Cup title defence at Monza with Strakka Racing, and are joined by factory academy hopeful Ben Barnicoat, who claimed fastest lap honours on his sprint debut at Misano.
Mercedes is the best-represented marque at the Monza 3 Hours, with 13 examples of the AMG-GT3 model set to take part across all three categories.
Fresh from their dominant victory in the opening round of the Sprint Cup two weeks ago, Maximilian Buhk and Franck Perera lead the German manufacturer's contingent with their HTP Motorsport car.
At Monza, the pair will be joined by Jimmy Eriksson, who himself finished on the podium at the Misano sprint.
Eriksson's sprint team-mate Dominik Baumann is slated to drive the sister HTP Motorsport pro car, sharing the seat with Edward Sandström and Fabian Schiller.
French squad AKKA-ASP is the other notable Mercedes flag-bearer, having placed one of its cars in the top five at Misano.
Felix Serralles and Daniel Juncadella – the two drivers who contributed to that effort – are joined by former IndyCar competitor Tristan Vautier in the #88 car.
Michael Meadows, Raffaele Marciello and DTM star Eduardo Mortara complete the team's pro entry.
Audi brings a total of seven cars to the royal parklands just north of Milan, with WRT, Sainteloc Racing and ISR aiming to turn around a disappointing showing at the sprint.
The factory-backed WRT squad features no surprises as Marcel Fässler/Dries Vanthoor/Will Stevens team for their first race as a trio, and Stuart Leonard/Robin Frijns/Jake Dennis partner up in a bid to claim the team's first win of the season.
A notable omission from the entry list are the two ROWE Racing BMW M6s belonging to the team that finished fourth in the Endurance Cup last year.
A clash with the Nürburgring 24 Hours qualifying race on the same weekend means ROWE decided to focus its efforts on that rather than the Blancpain opener.
That means there will be only one BMW in action at Monza, entered by series debutant Walkenhorst Motorsport.
Home interest is spurred by the mass of Ferrari and Lamborghini entries totalling almost half the field.
Each manufacturer has ten cars on the entry list, with the works-backed Kaspersky Motorsport Ferrari 488 GT3 driven by Giancarlo Fisichella, James Calado and Marco Cioci and the Grasser Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 of Christian Engelhart, Mirko Bortolotti and Super GT runner up Andrea Caldarelli.
Completing the entry are two-car efforts from Bentley, Jaguar and Nissan, with Aston Martin and Porsche confirming one car each.
