The start of Speed Week begins in just a couple of days but this time with a slight twist as two SRO series merge for a joint venture this time around the circuit of Spa Francorchamps.
With each series running this weekend’s visit to Belgium, the British GT Champiosnhip and French national FFSA GT4 Series will share track time togther for the first time to run as a converged event even though both series will run to their differing rule sets and will have their own qualifying and podium celebrations.
That means that there will be fifty-five multi-classed cars upon the grid this time around after the British GT Championship opened its 2026 campaign with the Silverstone 500 before moving onto the first sprint round from Oulton Park last time out whilst the FFSA GT4 series has ran at both Nogaro and then Dijon-Prenois.
That means that there will be at least six Aston Martin Racing powered crews taking part this time around – five from the UK and one from France but with still the potential of another as the Mirage Racing team have yet to confirm a chassis for their guesting American racers for their event.
If that comes off, that would be in addition to the Mirage Racing AMR Vantage GT4 of Jodie Sloss who will this time have a differing driving partner to David Levy in the form of Nicolas Siebenschuh and their #5 Am class entry.
Last time out at Dijon-Prenois, Sloss and Levy came away with a second and first in class with their Vantage GT4 Evo to now sit third overall in class.
Within the British GT Championship entry we again have the #007 Beechdean AMR Vantage GT3 entry of Andrew Howord and (a hopefully not Le Mans 24 weary) Ross Gunn after that dup converted their pair of pole positions into a pair of P2 overall finishes at the end of each hour long, pit stop punctuated sprint race.
Those results now see the pairing sit upon the top step of both the Overall and GT3 Pro-Am Drivers Championship, but their last race result will see them suffer a fifteen second additional time penalty at their scheduled stop this time around.
We then have the four Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4’s from MK Racing, Grange Racing, Townsend Racing and GBR Stratton Motorsport teams after enjoying a very successful Bank Holiday weekend outing to Cheshire at the end of May. There the silver classed #21 MK Racing GT4 of Will Orton and Jessica Hawkins secured a P2 result in race one last time out before following the #27 car home for another P2 overall podium after Mondays race.
In race one, there was also Pro-Am class success for the #27 Grange Motorsport AMR of Dan Lavery and Darren Turner before there was an AMR 1-2-3 lock out of the Pro-Am class ranks in race two as the #27 car took the win with James Townsend/Joe Wheeler coming home second aboard their #40 car whilst GBR Stratton secured another class podium finish for both John Hartshorne and Ronan Pearson aboard their #97 entry.
These results now see the #21 MK Racing crew sitting second within both the Overall GT4 Drivers and Silver Drivers Championship tables whilst Hartshorne and Pearson sit second within the Pro-Am ranks after three decent points scoring finishes so far. Townsend and Wheeler sit fourth with the Lavery/Turner pairing now just one point behind. The #21, #27 and #40 Aston Martins will also all suffer from additional overall and class winning time penalties come their pitstops on Sunday.
This weekend’s race will just be the standard two-hour affair for both group sets of entries – something of a novelty for the FFSA GT4 entries who are more akin to running just one-hour races. The weekend will also run a standard race weekend format with private testing on Friday before Free Practice and Pre-Qualifying preceding Qualifying on Saturday with the two-hour race starting at 14:20hrs on Sunday.
Photo Credits – Teams / Series / social media