Tough times for the AMR powered crews in SRO America from Barber at the weekend

Monday, September 28, 2026

Sadly there wasn’t too much to shout about from the weekend after SRO America three GT World Challenge America, GT4 America and GT America Series all visited Barber Motorsport Park near Birmingham, Alabama for their collective penultimate rounds of the season.

The #71 Rebel Rock Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 of Frank DePew and Robin Liddell was the only mainstay of all AMR powered entries for the weekend as they continued to see out DePew’s transition from GT4 into GT3 based racing for the first time.

As such, there was no real expectation for the crew to set the timing screen alight throughout the weekend, rather than a slower and steadier pace which saw them come through again tenth within their Pro-Am class by the end of this three-hour race. That result represented another improvement upon their qualifying pace that saw the crew start from P13 in class.

Within the solo driven GT America Series, we welcomed back the 89X Motorsport team as they ran their Lamborghini Trofeo based driver Christian Pipas within the GT4 Invitational class for the weekend’s two forty-minute races that saw him finish the best of the GT4 based runners in race one and second best in race two. It appears that the purpose of that exercise was to give Pipas more seat time before moving into an event in Italy in a few weeks’ time.

Then, within the dual driven GT4 America Series we again had the #9 89X Motorsport AMR Vantage GT4 of Pipas alongside team boss Micheal Fitzpatrick running within the Am class this time around. Again, their attendance was a simple means to an end as they finished the first hour long, pit stop punctuated race on Saturday P8 in class before seeing their weekend out one place higher in race two on Sunday.

The real bad news, however, came for the Series and Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 debuting VPX Motorsport team and their two raw GT4 recruits of Jaden Harry and Joseph Maley.

Stepping up into the realms of GT4 racing for the first time, an unfortunate collision with another car during Free Practice 2 saw both cars heavily damaged with talk of their new AMR Vantage GT4 Evo being a write off even before they got to go racing as such.

Harry was understood to be behind the wheel at the time of the incident and later received full responsibility for the incident for which he will receive a sanction for the next time he participates within an SRO America event. The team did however, go out of their way to source another car (Porsche) for the duo to eventually race within the series without further incident.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media