Weekly Racing Roundup (11.20.23)

News & Notes

***Three of Huber Motorsport’s CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa Bronze Cup class winners will reunite for the Asian Le Mans Series driving for Herberth Motorsport. Matteo Cairoli, who claimed the overall pole at Spa, will share the German team’s No. 33 Porsche 911 GT3 R with DTM driver Tim Heinemann and Bronze-rated Antares Au.

***Pure Rxcing, which receives technical support from Herberth, has named Klaus Bachler, Joel Sturm and Alex Malykhin for its Asian LMS campaign. It is the same combination that finished fifth in this year’s Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup Bronze standings.

***GR Racing will bring its FIA World Endurance Championship GTE-Am crew to the Asian LMS grid where it will field a Ferrari 296 GT3 for the first time. The long-time Porsche squad is lining up with Ben Barker, Ricardo Pera and owner Mike Wainwright.

***The Monochrome GT4 Australia series will become part of SRO Motorsports Group’s structure next year, under the newly formed SRO Motorsports Australia organization. The series made its debut in 2023 as part of the Australian Production Cars series. One of its original co-managers, Troy Williams, will continue in the role for the move to SRO.

***Next year’s GT4 Australia season will be a mixture of endurance and sprint races. It will start with a non-championship three-hour contest at Sandown in February and include four sprint events with pairs of 60-minute races, plus two points-paying four-hour enduros.

***British team 7TSIX has announced the driver lineup for its Gulf 12 Hours debut next month. Wayne Marrs, Ameerh Naran, Matt Topham and Tom Jackson will share the No. 76 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo which has a bright red livery.

***Rallying legend Sebastien Loeb will take part in the final round of the Ultimate Cup Series at Paul Ricard this weekend. The nine-time FIA World Rally champion will drive a Krafft Racing Renault RS.01 in the four-hour GT endurance race, sharing the wheel with Laurene Godey and Gregory Launier. Loeb’s most recent sports car outing came in a guest DTM start last year.

***Tickets for next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans race day have sold out, event organizer the ACO confirmed last Friday after two days of general sale. Tickets for the test day, practice sessions and Hyperpole are still available.

***The third-generation hydrogen prototype built for the ACO’s hydrogen racing project will be called H24EVO. The name was proposed in a call for public contributions and selected by a panel that included ACO President Pierre Fillon and H24Project president Jean-Michel Bouresche, among others.

***The provisional entry list for the fourth edition of the 6 Hours of Abu Dhabi in late January features 15 cars in the headlining GT3 class. Most of the field will be entering the event off the back of the Hankook 24H Dubai which takes place one week prior.

***Lamborghini is “evaluating different weekends” for its 2024 World Finals which has been announced on the same weekend as next year’s Jeddah 1000km, the final round of the GTWC Europe Endurance Cup season. Several teams and drivers are involved in both competitions, while Lamborghini used GTWC Europe race director Alain Adam for last weekend’s World Finals at Vallelunga.

***Lamborghini’s Head of Motorsport Giorgio Sanna told Sportscar365: “Racetracks are always super busy with testing and events, so it’s not easy to put a schedule together. Even if we have a clash with Jeddah, I don’t see particular problems because we are structured to follow GT3 and Super Trofeo at the same time. But if there will be a chance to modify, to anticipate the weekend of the World Finals, we will do it with pleasure.”

***The 10th edition of the World Finals at Vallelunga attracted a weekend attendance of 10,000 spectators, according to Lamborghini.

On this weekend: Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS (Adelaide)