Vautier and Hawksworth will share one of the Portuguese squad's two Oreca 07-Gibsons with bronze-rated Fred Poordad as they tackle the Pro-am sub-division of the top LMP2 category in the ELMS.
For factory Lexus driver Hawksworth, it marks a first foray into European racing since a partial campaign in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup with Tech 1 Racing in 2019.
“I am really excited to be joining the Algarve Pro Racing team for the 2023 European Le Mans Series,” said Hawksworth. “It’s going to be a lot of fun to be doing some racing in Europe again and I have only heard great things about the Oreca 07 LMP2 car and the team.
"I have two great teammates in Tristan and Fred and we will be working hard alongside the team to get some strong results.”
Vautier has been a regular of the IMSA paddock since 2017, spending the past four seasons with the JDC-Miller MotorSports team in the DPi class, but was absent from last month's Rolex 24 at Daytona season-opener.
“I look forward to working with such strong teammates in Jack and Fred," said Vautier. "I’ve shared a track with Jack for several years, but we have always been in different classes. Nevertheless, we have similar backgrounds in single-seaters and there’s a lot of mutual respect.
"As far as Fred is concerned, we only met at the Rolex 24 at Daytona but I’ve seen what he has done from a distance and I’m excited about partnering up with him for his ELMS debut. Thanks to Algarve Pro for trusting in me. I’m hopeful we will deliver some great results.”
The ELMS entry list published on Monday shows that Algarve's pro-class LMP2 car will be driven by factory Cadillac driver Alex Lynn, James Allen and silver-rated Kyffin Simpson.
It is one of seven Oreca 07s in the top class, the remainder being made up by United Autosports, IDEC Sport, Duqueine Team, Inter Europol Competition, Cool Racing and Panis Racing.
Of these teams, only Inter Europol and Panis Racing have yet to reveal their full line-ups, with only Jakub Smiechowski and Job van Uitert listed for each team respectively so far. The remaining teams had already announced their line-ups.
A total of 11 cars will contest the Pro-am subclass, which requires each car to be driven by one bronze-rated driver.
Father-and-son duo Juan Pablo and Sebastian Montoya will join Henrik Hedman at DragonSpeed, which rejoins the ELMS after a season away.
Also of note is the AF Corse line-up, which features Alpine WEC driver Matthieu Vaxiviere and another Lexus IMSA regular in the form of Ben Barnicoat alongside Francois Perrodo.
The 42-car ELMS grid is made up by a dozen LMP3 cars (of which 10 are Ligiers and two are Duqueines) and the same number of GTE machines (five Ferraris, four Porsches and three Aston Martins).
Hollywood star Michael Fassbender continues with the Proton Porsche team, joined this season by Richard Lietz and Martin Rump.
