Photo: Team WRT
Audi Sport factory drivers Nico Mueller and Frederic Vervisch will co-drive with Valentino Rossi in the Italian’s full-time sports car racing debut this season in Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS with Team WRT.
WRT announced on Friday its full driver lineups across both the Endurance and Sprint Cups with its fleet of five Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II entries.
Rossi, a nine-time Grand Prix motorcycle racing world champion, will share the No. 46 Audi with Vervisch for the entire season, with Mueller joining the duo for the five Endurance Cup rounds including the TotalEnergies 24 Hours of Spa.
The car, as previously reported by Sportscar365, will run in the Pro class.
Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts, meanwhile, will defend their overall series’ title in the No. 32 Audi, alongside Kelvin van der Linde for the Endurance Cup races.
WRT will field a third Pro class entry in the Sprint Cup rounds for Christopher Mies and Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer in the No. 33 car, with a completely different lineup of Ryuichiro Tomita, Arnold and Maxime Robin running in the new-for-2022 Gold Cup class for the five endurance races.
Simmenauer will join full-season drivers Benjamin Goethe and Thomas Neubauer in the No. 30 Audi in the Endurance Cup, meanwhile, which will retain the car’s Silver class status for all ten rounds this season.
Finally, Finlay Hutchison will spearhead the lineup int he No. 31 Audi, alongside Diego Menchaca and Lewis Proctor for the Endurance Cup and Hutchinson’s co-driver for Sprint Cup races still to-be-confirmed.
The Belgian squad will be looking to defend its five GTWC Europe titles earned last year, including teams and drivers in the overall and Sprint Cup competitions, alongside the teams’ title in the Endurance Cup.
“We are very happy to announce such a great driver line-up for the 2022 GTWCE season,” said team principal Vincent Vosse.
“Putting it together has required time and effort, but I am fully satisfied with the outcome and I would like to thank all partners for their support.
“It will be a season of challenges, as to retain five titles and field five cars is certainly demanding, but we are very excited to take up challenges of this kind.
“We will be present in three different classes and determined to do well in each of them while as per Team WRT’s tradition, we will have an interesting mix of experience and youth.
“Finally, I am happy to welcome to the WRT family some new faces but also pleased to retain long-standing friends.”
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