14 Cars for Three-Hour Sydney Enduro

This weekend’s three-hour Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS endurance race at Sydney Motorsport Park has attracted a 14-car entry, marking the championship’s smallest grid of the season so far.

SMP, formerly known as Eastern Creek Raceway, plays host to the penultimate round of the season, which departs from the series’ usual format of two one-hour sprints with a three-hour night race held on Saturday evening.

The entry marks a reduction of five cars compared to the most recent round at Phillip Island in late August, and is split between ten Pro-Am cars and four Am machines.

As previously announced, Volante Rosso has scaled back to a single car for the SMP round, fielding only its No. 14 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 as the Harrolds Racing-branded No. 34 Mercedes AMG GT3 Evo sits out the weekend.

There has been a further change to the lineup for the Volante Aston as Alex Gardner has announced he will miss the remainder of the season due to exams. His place alongside Filipino racer Andre Canard will be taken by British GT regular Jamie Day.

In the Am class, two of Melbourne Performance Centre’s Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo IIs will be absent, namely the No. 9 and No. 22 cars that have been driven solo by Marc Cini and Ash Samadi respectively, leaving only a single Audi in the class (the No. 44 Tigani Motorsport example) to go up against three Mercedes-AMGs.

Neither of the Trophy class entries seen last time out at Phillip Island, the No. 38 KMB Motorsport Aston Martin V12 Vantage and the No. 222 Scott Taylor Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R, are making the trip to SMP.

Arise Racing GT Ferrari pair Chaz Mostert and Liam Talbot head to the penultimate round of the season with a comfortable 30-point lead in the drivers’ standings ahead of MPC Audi duo Brad Schumacher and Will Brown.

Two practice sessions will take place on Friday, with two qualifying sessions following on Saturday morning ahead of a ‘Super Pole shootout’ to decide the grid.

The three-hour race is scheduled to begin at 6:45 p.m. local time (3:45 a.m. EDT).