44 Cars to Contest Endurance Season-Opener at Monza

A total of 44 cars including 17 Pro runners are on the entry list for next weekend’s Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup opener at Monza.

Four additional entries have joined since the publication of the 40-car full-season entry list on March 25.

RAM Racing will field a Pro-Am Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo for last year’s British GT runner-up Sam de Haan, Callum MacLeod and reigning British GT champion Rob Collard.

This full-season trio will be joined by Ricky Collard for the Total 24 Hours of Spa. Collard is driving for the Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG squad at Monza in Silver Cup.

GetSpeed Performance has also added an Endurance Cup program with a Mercedes-AMG in the Pro-Am category for Nico Bastian, Florian Scholze and Oliver Grotz.

Scholze was originally due to contest the long-distance races with SPS Automotive Performance, which now only has Dominik Baumann and Valentin Pierburg listed.

As announced on Thursday, Optimum Motorsport will run a McLaren 720S GT3 in Pro-Am for Inception Racing’s Brendan Iribe and Ollie Millroy, while AF Corse has two Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020s registered after only the No. 53 was shown on the season entry.

Andrea Bertolini, Louis Machiels and Lorenzo Bontempelli will team up in the No. 52 AF Corse car while European Le Mans Series regulars Matt Griffin and Duncan Cameron are named in the No. 53.

However, Griffin and Cameron have already appeared on the entry list for the ELMS 4 Hours of Barcelona which is taking place on the same day as GTWC Europe at Monza.

There are few surprises in the Pro-class field with most of the driver lineups being covered in team announcements over the last few weeks.

Of note, Team WRT will run Kelvin van der Linde alongside reigning GTWC Europe Sprint Cup champions Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts in the No. 32 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo.

This is the only Pro entry for the Belgian squad, which is also running two Audis in Silver Cup. Those lineups include former Garage 59 driver James Pull, former Bentley Academy driver Frank Bird and Ryuichiro Tomita, who drove for WRT in Sprint last season.

Elsewhere, last year’s 24H Spa runner-up Attempto Racing has Christopher Mies, Mattia Drudi and Kim Luis Schramm onboard its No. 66 Audi.

Mercedes-AMG, Porsche, BMW, McLaren, Ferrari and Lamborghini are also represented in the top class. Garage 59 brings Aston Martin to Silver Cup and Pro-Am, while French squad CMR is running the sole Bentley Continental GT3 in the Pro-Am division.

Silver Cup and Pro-Am feature a total of 13 and 14 entries, respectively.