Operating as the third round of that series after opening races at both Paul Ricard in mid-April and more recently from Monza at the beginning of June, six Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 crews again form significant parts of the Pro, Gold and Silver class line ups with entries from the Walkenhorst Motorsport, Comtoyou Racing and Verstappen.com (2Seas Motorsport teams) this weekend.
For the #7 Comtoyou Racing crew of Nicki Thiim, Marco Sorensen and Mattia Drudi, this is of course their 2024 title defence race as they made full opportunity of the more favoured Ferrari being delayed with a broken-down car within the narrow pit lane entry during a pivotable part of last years race.
Thiim and Drudi come ‘fresh’ from their racing exploits with the Walkenhorst team at the ADAC Ravenol 24H Nurburgring race whilst Sorensen has already competed at the Le Mans 24hr two weeks ago before flying out stateside to race in the latest six-hour IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship from Watkins Glen before returning to Europe this weekend for the Spa 24! Some drivers and crew are really having to earn their salaries at the moment!!
Last time out in Italy also saw the #7 crew deliver their best result of the season so far with a P3 overall finish so a repeat of a win at Spa this time around could well throw that trio back to the front of the overall leaderboard as it did last season.
Another in-form crew is the #33 Verstappen.com gold class entry for Thierry Vermeulen, Chris Lulham and Harry King after they have finished both opening races second in class so another good performance in Belgium could see them (and others) pick up valuable mid race and end of race championship points.
In addition to these two front running contenders will be a further six Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 crews competing – most of course will be the remnants of the full season GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup entry but also two ad-hoc entries from both of the Beechdean AMR and another from the Comtoyou team.
Completing the full season entries who will be racing at Spa by right will be the #21 Comtoyou Racing silver entry of Nicolas Baert/Jamie Day/Kobe Pauwels with Xavier Massen alongside the #270 Comtoyou Racing bronze classed entry of Jessica Hawkins/Antoine Potty/Alexandre Leroy with Rodrigo Almeida plus the two Walkenhorst Motorsport entries. These are the #34 Pro entry of Christian Krognes/David Pittard and Henrique Chaves and the #35 silver entry of Mateo Villagomez/Oliver Soderstrom and Romain Leroux. The #270 crew will certainly be hoping for better after Potty crashed out heavily at Monza during an earlier session and were not able to continue.
The additional two Pro-Am entries are the #11 Comtoyou entry of Frederic Jousset/Bernardo Sousa/Sebastian Alvarez and Sergio Sette Camara plus the #100 Beechdean entry for Andrew Howard/Ross Gunn/Valentin Hasse-Clot and Anthony McIntosh.
Tuesday sees the pre-event bronze driver test before Free Practice/Pre-Qualifying/Qualifying and night practice on Thursday before Super Pole and warm up on Friday afternoon/evening before the start of the race at 16:30 hrs local on Saturday.
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