New and returning faces at GT4 European Series gears up for Spa week

Monday, June 26, 2023

Spa week this week as the SRO holds its annual twenty-four flagship event around the infamous Belgian circuit and whilst we look forward to supporting the solo Aston Martin Racing powered team within this year’s event, we have now such trouble with choice within the supporting GT4 European Series.

For this series, Spa is only the third round of their season after opening rounds at both Monza and Paul Ricard and whilst the last round saw just eleven AMR Vantage GT4 powered crews, this week’s visit to Spa sees that number swell to thirteen as absent friends return and new faces make an appearance as well.

Working through the provisional entry list of a series record breaking six two entries, Spa will see the following full season entries.

#5 Mirage Racing – Ruben Del Sarte / Jamie Day

#7 Mirage Racing – Roman Carton / Louis Meric

#18 Team Racing Spirit – Lorenz Stegman / Markus Lungstrass

#19 Racing One – Andreas Bachman / Jessica Bachman

#25 JSB Competition – Florien Briche / Julien Briche

#26 Racing Spirit of Leman – Akhil Rabindra / Rodrique Gillion

#48 GPA Racing – Bailey Voisin / TBC

#72 GPA Racing – Kevin Jimenez / Florent Grizaud

#74 Racing Spirit of Leman – Victor Weyrich / Konstantin Lachenauer

#89 AGS Events Racing – Mike Parisy / Nicolas Gomar

#98 AGS Events Racing – Timothe Buret / Vincent Bouteiller

On top of these, we will also see the return of the #27 Newbridge Motorsport Aston Martin, now fully repaired after its Monza accident with Alex Denning. The UK team has faced other strife as well as the car in the intervening period as having missed Paul Ricard, Matt Topham has realigned himself back to the British GT Championship – this time within a McLaren GT3.

Since then, former GT4 European Series AMR racer Gus Bowers has confirmed his seat within the team (at least for Spa at least) but also that Denning has appeared to also fall be the wayside with Asian based racer Liu Lic Ka taking his seat too but still within the Pro-Am class.

The final AMR entry is another Racing One team prepared (and can only be assumed as a guesting one) and they provide a car for American drivers Andy Lee and Todd Parriott within their #9 car. Lee is obviously well known to most as he partners Elias Sabo within the #8 Flying Lizard AMR that they run within the parallel GT4 America Series.

Other issues sees Ruben Del Sarte take the place of Rory Van der Steur within the #5 Mirage car as well as Bailey Voisin was co-driverless again after his original GPA Racing driver parted company with the team but will this time be joined by FFSA GT4 racer Tom Verdier.

Private testing gets underway at the circuit tomorrow before the officially timed sessions of Free Practice on Thursday. As usual, the series will run a two one-hour race programme with race one on Friday and Race 2 on Saturday.

Also time out at Paul Ricard saw podium success from both the #72 GPA Racing crew as well as the #74 Racing Spirit of Leman crew so success after the challenges of Spa Francorchamps will be high upon the agenda of most this weekend.

Photo credits – Teams / Series