Barcelona Weekend Notebook

Photo: Vision Sport Agency

***Fifty cars are set for this afternoon’s Blancpain GT Series finale at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with the Endurance Cup and overall Pro titles amongst those set to be decided.

***Two driver crews are in contention for the Endurance Cup title: Bentley Team M-Sport’s Andy Soucek, Maxime Soulet and Vincent Abril, and Grasser Racing Team’s Mirko Bortolotti, Christian Engelhart and Andrea Caldarelli. The Bentley drivers have an eight-point advantage in the standings.

***Bortolotti and Engelhart have a 22-point lead over Abril in the overall Blancpain GT title fight, meanwhile. 

***Jonny Adam and Ahmad Al Harthy already wrapped up the Endurance Cup Pro-Am honors at the Total 24 Hours of Spa and Alexander Matschull has also theoretically secured the overall Blancpain GT Pro-Am title with his only contender being co-driver Daniel Keilwitz who has 12 fewer points as a result of missing the Paul Ricard race.

***David Perel has also secured the overall Am Cup title but he and co-drivers Jacques Duyver and Marco Zanuttini are only 20 points ahead in their class standings in the Endurance Cup, with Pierre Ehret and Rino Mastronardi in second.

***Both the new Audi R8 LMS GT4 and BMW M4 GT4 are present at the track this weekend and the new BMW scored the GT4 European Series Southern Cup race win on its series debut on Saturday with Beitske Visser and Dennis Marschall driving the Schubert Motorsport-entered car.

***The GT4 Series is one of several supports this weekend for the Festival de la Velocidad and over 150 cars from the five series present were lined up on the pit straight for a group photo on Friday evening.

***Another new GT4 car, the Mercedes-AMG GT4, is set to enter three upcoming endurance races with HTP Motorsport. The German crew will field cars in the 12H Spa, 24H COTA, and VLN race on Oct. 21. Damien Faulkner, Bernd Schneider, Indy Dontje and Joerg Viebahn will be amongst the drivers competing. 

***The new-generation Bentley Continental GT3 was expected to be revealed this weekend but hasn’t been. The car’s testing program continues and is expected to debut next year. As such, this weekend could be the current car’s final Blancpain GT race.

***While several teams have made driver lineup changes, the No. 19 Grasser Lamborghini Huracan GT3 stands out with regular Ezequiel Perez Companc joined by Frederic Vervisch and Renger van der Zande. 

***Michael Christensen is the only competitor with three Behaviour Warning Points but the Danish Porsche driver has only entered Spa this year and so will not be penalized. Dominik Baumann, Alex Demirdjian, Marco Mapelli and Immanuel Vinke all have two points heading into the final round.

***Eurosport will show the final 90 minutes of the race from 3:30 p.m. BST, presented by Mark Cole and Martin Haven. The entire race will also be streamed live on the series’ website and GT World YouTube channel.

***The updated entry list can be found here.

Laurent Mercier contributed to this report

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.