Championship Battles Coming into Focus Ahead of COTA

Photo: Fabian Lagunas/SRO

Championship battles are coming into focus in Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS entering this weekend’s fifth and sixth rounds of the season at Circuit of The Americas.

The 20-turn, 3.425-mile circuit near Austin will feature an unchanged 17-car entry from last month’s event at NOLA Motorsports Park.

Series newcomers RS1 continues to lead the Pro class points standings with Eric Filgueiras and Steven McAleer, despite the team having been handed a post-race penalty from Race 2 at NOLA for incident responsibility.

Filgueiras and McAleer hold a nine-point advantage over the BimmerWorld pairing of Chandler Hull and Bill Auberlen, who picked up their first class victory of the season in the second 90-minute race of the weekend in New Orleans.

Racers Edge Motorsports’ Mario Farnbacher and Ashton Harrison have slipped to third, a further eight points behind in the title race, after a challenging NOLA event that was marred by incidents triggered by several other competitors.

With two overall wins this season, CrowdStrike by Riley has been the best-performing team in the series, with Colin Braun and George Kurtz in a four-point lead over the Wright Motorsports duo of Elliott Skeer and Adam Adelson in the Pro-Am class.

TRG’s Derek DeBoer has moved into third in the class standings following his and Valentin Hasse Clot’s runner-up class finish in Race 2 at NOLA.

Hasse Clot will again team up with DeBoer this weekend, in place of fellow Aston Martin factory driver Ross Gunn.

As was the case in NOLA, Bartone Racing Bros by RealtTime is the lone Am class competitor, with Andy Pilgrim and Anthony Bartone at the wheel of its Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

Track action kicks off on Thursday with a pair of test session, while official practice is on tap for Friday ahead of qualifying and the pair of 90-minute races on Saturday and Sunday, both of which will be streamed live on SRO’s GT World YouTube page.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John