After a thrilling start of the season at Estoril, the International GT Open, which is living a new start in 2017, is ready to face its second event of the year and one of its most traditional and awaited rendez-vous: Spa-Francorchamps. The magnificent track in the Belgian Ardennes will see again exciting action and even larger grid, with 26 entries already confirmed.
The 2017 season-opener at Estoril has written history, with the stunning double win of the new Lexus RC-F cars in their international GT3 racing debut. This major achievement has been widely reported and commented, and will now have to be confirmed. What is sure is that the Japanese cars entrusted to Albert Costa-Philipp Frommenwiler (Emil Frey Racing) and Dominik and Mario Farnbacher (Farnbacher Motorsport) are there to bid for the top honours but will probably not have an easy life from now on! Yoshiaki Kinoshita, who oversees Lexus’ racing programme, commented to Endurance-Info: “The successes in Portugal were beyond our expectations but prove that we are working well. Lexus is putting in place a customer racing service from scratch. It’s a completely new project that is starting with 6 cars and three different programmes in Europe, Asia and America”.
No doubt that the competition will seek to react as from Spa. Starting with the reigning car brand, Lamborghini, whose Huracáns will find in Spa a much more favorable track. Reigning co-champion Thomas Biagi and Giovanni Venturini, who took a podium finish at Estoril, are ready to fight back. So are also the BMW M6 of Teo Martín, or the best Pro-Am cars, such as the McLarens (with Rob Bell-Shaun Balfe on the Balfe Motorsport car and the Garage 59 cars of Michael Benham-Duncan Tappy and Alexander West-Côme Ledogar) and the Ferrari 488 cars of Marco Cioci-Piergiuseppe Perazzini (AF Corse) and Miguel Ramos- Mikkel Mac (Spirit of Race).
In the Am category, the Mercedes AMG will again be the favourites, with Estoril winners Marcio Basso-Nonô Figueiredo (Sports&You) and Martin Konrad-Alex Hrachowina (MS Racing) willing to repeat their successes and reigning champions Luis Silva-António Coimbra (Sports&You) certainly eager to be again at the top. An Antonelli Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán entry is also being announced.
New faces and old friends in Spa
This second round will also bring interesting novelties. Among all-season entrants, the only difference with respect to Estoril will be the absence of the third BMW M6 entered by BMW Team Teo Martín, while SF Racing will make its official season debut. Fu Songyang had to miss the Portuguese round for other commitments but joins the series as from now with the SF Racing Ferrari 488 shared with Andrea Caldarelli, who is living a very successful start of the season both in Europe and Japan.
It is now well-known that the leading car of BMW Team Teo Martín will have a varying driver line-up, with Portugal’s Lourenço Beirão da Veiga associated with a different stellar name at each round. After António Félix Da Costa at Estoril, it will be turn of Nelson Piquet Jr at Spa. A top contender in the WEC and in F.E (of which he was the first champion in 2015), the 31-year-old former F.1 will not be at his debut in the GT Open, as he already contested the Barcelona finale in 2010, taking one win on a Aurora RT Ferrari 430 shared with Álvaro Parente.
Among other regular contenders, it is to be noted that Tom Onslow-Cole will not be able to be present at Spa on the SPS Automotive Performance Mercedes AMG. Subbing for the Brit alongside Valentin Pierburg will be one of the rising young stars in GT Racing, Dutchman Jules Szymkowiak.
Spa will also have a good share of new entries. As it did last year, Russian outfit Kaspersky Motorsport will contest in selected events and has already confirmed its presence at Spa and Ricard. In Belgium Alex Moiseev will be paired with Asian GT racing specialist Davide Rizzo.
Last year at Silverstone, a small new team from the UK stunned everybody by imposing its Lamborghini Gallardo REX in one of the races. The ‘yellow submarine’ of Nigel Mustill is back and ready to repeat itself, with its unchanged top pair, Tomáš Enge-Craig Dolby.
A similar story is the one of Aston Brussels Racing, which has been a sporadic but race- winning contender in the GT Open. The enthusiastic Brussels squad is off to play its local hero role to the fullest with its Aston Martin Vantage, again in the hands of Belgian stars, this time Tim Verbergt and Sam Dejonghe, who is back to GT Sport events after shining in the European F.3 Open some years.
At Spa, the International GT Open will be sharing the race programme, as customary, with the Euroformula Open and will christen the TC Open, the new GT Sport-promoted series for touring cars that will start its journey in Belgium. Other exciting partnering series will be the Radical Challenge and the FCD Racing Series.
All the action can be followed from fans at home thanks to live coverage by major national broadcasters in key countries such as UK (BT Sport), Italy (Sportitalia), Spain (Teledeporte RTVE), Portugal (Sport TV), Russia, CIS countries and Baltics (Poverkhnost Sport), Poland (PolSat Sport TV) and Central Europe (Digisport in CZ, SK, HU and RO), among others. In addition, international coverage is ensured by Motors Trend on demand. Races are also livestreamed in English and Italian with commentary by Ben Evans and Antonio Caruccio, respectively, on our website www.gtopen.net.
