Barwell to Make Sprint Cup Debut with GT Open Champions

Barwell Motorsport will embark on its first season contesting the full Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS, with last year’s International GT Open champions Henrique Chaves and Miguel Ramos forming the core driver pairing.

The British team is expanding into the GTWC Europe Sprint Cup with a single Pro-Am Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo after several seasons of racing in the Endurance Cup.

Last year Barwell won the Endurance Cup Silver category title, the Pro-Am race at the Total 24 Hours of Spa and the Intelligent Money British GT Championship.

The team has scaled back to a single car for its maiden full-length GTWC Europe term with Chaves and Ramos, after fielding Endurance entries in Silver and Pro-Am in 2020.

Its new Portuguese driving duo captured last season’s GT Open title driving a McLaren 720S GT3 prepared by Spanish outfit Teo Martin Motorsport.

They will be joined at the three and six-hour GTWC Europe Endurance Cup races by Adrian Amstutz, who is a double Am Cup champion in the series with Barwell.

Leo Machitski, whose main program this year is with Barwell in British GT, will partner Chaves and Ramos at the 24 Hours of Spa in early August.

Machitski shared the 2018 and 2019 Am title wins with Amstutz, while the pair drove with Ramos for most of the races in the latter of those two seasons.

Barwell says that it’s “highly likely” that its fourth team member for Spa will be a Lamborghini-affiliated professional driver.

“Going for a GTWC Europe overall class title and competing in Sprint is something the team has been wanting to do for a few years now,” said team principal Mark Lemmer.

“And we know with Miguel and Henrique on board for the full season we should be challenging for Pro-Am victories from round one, with our fantastic Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo.”

Chaves, who had a brief spell in LMP2 before switching to GT3 with Teo Martin in 2019, added: “I’m really pleased to be joining Barwell Motorsport for the upcoming 2021 season.

“The team has a very good record in the past few years, which shows quality and ambition, so I’m very excited to start working with them and to pursue race wins and titles.

“I’m also very happy to keep racing alongside Miguel and also to join with Adrian, Leo and Barwell Motorsport, so we all can achieve great success this year.”