Same faces, returning faces and new faces to look forward to in SRO Americas visit to Barber this weekend

SRO America and its three GT series move onto Barber Motorsport Park near Birmingham, Alabama for their respective penultimate rounds of the GT World Challenge America, GT4 America and GT America Series.

2026 has seen a fluid season in the number of general entries across their GT3 and GT4 based series with sometimes only the #71 Rebel Rock Racing team flying the Aston Martin Racing flag across all three although this time around, we welcome back some returning faces as well as some more new faces into the fray.

 

As said already, the #71 Rebel Rock Racing AMR Vantage GT3 of Frank DePew and Robin Liddell will again be back in business within the GT3 only series as they continue with their GT4 to GT3 transition for DePew that has been challenging at times albeit with some brief periods of success amongst the four races that they have competed in so far.

Last time out at Road America was something of a painful one for DePew after his green liveried Aston disappeared into a cloud of dust kicked up by another spinning car at the Kink only for that to collect both the #71 and two other cars that would end race day early for all concerned. Fortunately, nobody was otherwise injured within the event although there were several cars that needed plenty of TLC from their teams afterwards.

 

Hopefully, all will be more fortunate this time around.

GT America also sees another Aston Martin powered entry with the inclusion of the #9 89X Motorsport AMR of Christian Pipas within the mixed GT3/Cup/GT4 powered series. This is the first time since we have seen the team in an SRO America series this season and only the third time this year after two outings within the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge.

Pipas is a regular with the 89X Motorsport team but usually races one of the Lamborghini’s within that one make series so this is probably just some track experience exercise for him. He will compete within a grid size of seventeen entries for their two fort-minute races.

 

Finally, within the GT4 America Series we welcome two AMR powered entries as Pipas is then joined by team boss Mike Fitzpatrick within the #9 Am Class entry and also the #44 VPX Motorsport AMR entry of Jaden Harry and Joseph Maley in their Pro-Am entry.

VPX Motorsport is a team more associated with the running of Porsche’s, but these two drivers are new graduates to the GT4 class of racing this time around. Sadly, there is no Racers Edge AMR entry this time around within either GT4 based series.

This weekend’s timetable will them compete within two one-hour long races with a compulsory pits stop and driver change halfway through.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media