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British Porsche driver Nick Tandy will race in the inaugural United SportsCar Championship next season with the factory CORE Autosport squad.

Tandy will share a Porsche 911 RSR - to be numbered 911 — with Richard Lietz, who moves over from the Manthey World Endurance Championship squad, in the

GT Le Mans class of the new series.

Patrick Long, who was part of CORE's factory-blessed American Le Mans Series programme in 2013, will drive #912 with new Porsche factory driver Michael Christensen from Denmark.

Tandy, who claimed class honours at Petit Le Mans ALMS finale at Road Atlanta in October with the Walker-run Team Falken Tire Porsche squad, said: "America is what

I really wanted.

"I like the style of racing, the people and the country, and in the few races I did last year, I had a lot of success [which included a GTC class ALMS win with the NGT team

at Laguna Seca]."

Patrick Pilet and Jorg Bergmeister will join CORE line-up, in #911 and #912 respectively, for the Daytona 24 Hours USC opener next month and the Sebring and Petit Le Mans enduros.

CORE has already started testing at Sebring with one of the new 2014-specification RSRs that Manthey ran at the WEC finale in Bahrain (pictured above).

The announcement of the Porsche's US line-up means that Bergmeister, Pilet, Marco Holzer and Frederic Makowiecki will contest the WEC.

The Manthey pairings have yet to be announced, but it is expected that Bergmeister

and Pilet will share a car for a second consecutive season.

Which of the USC drivers will join Manthey for the Le Mans 24 Hours has also still to

be confirmed.

The ninth full factory Porsche GT driver, Wolf Henzler will remain with Falken in 2014.