Four former Macau GT Cup – FIA GT World Cup champions will battle for victory in this year’s running of the prestigious event amongst an intriguing line-up of international sportscar stars.
Edoardo Mortara, Maro Engel, Laurens Vanthoor and Augusto Farfus Jr, who have eight wins in the race between them, will return to the end-of-season GT3 shoot-out on the bill of the Suncity Group 66th Macau Grand Prix on November 14th -17th.
Mortara, who has earned the moniker ‘Mr. Macao’ for his six wins across the GT race and the Formula 3 Macau Grand Prix, will again drive a Mercedes-AMG GT3, this year for the factory Mercedes-AMG Team Craft Bamboo Racing squad.
The Italian, who won the Macau GT Cup in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and again in 2017 after it had become the FIA GT World Cup, will be racing on the 6.2km Guia street circuit for a 12th consecutive year. Third behind Farfus Jr. and Engel last year, Mortara nevertheless made his mark by bettering the race lap record he had set in 2013 on his way to the podium.
Engel, meanwhile, returns for a seventh straight year in a bid to extend a run of podiums stretching back to 2014, the year of the first of his two victories in the race. The German again drives for Mercedes-AMG Team GruppeM Racing, with which he finished second last year.
The factory-backed GruppeM team’s second car is raced by Raffaelo Marciello, a former member of the Ferrari Driver Academy and the 2018 Blancpain GT Series title winner. Mercedes-AMG Team Craft Bamboo Racing is also running a second car for 2013 ADAC Formel Masters champion and 2017 Audi Sport R8 LMS Cup champion Alessio Picariello, one of five silver-rated drivers under the FIA’s categorisation system invited to take part in the event.
Further Mercedes are entered for silver drivers by a pair of Asian teams. Zun Motorsport Crew runs a Mercedes-AMG GT3 for Adderly Fong of Hong Kong, China, who has multiple Macao starts to his name in both the F3 Macau Grand Prix and the Macau GT Cup. Solite Indigo Racing becomes the first South Korean team to enter the race with Roelof Bruins, 2019 Blancpain GT World Challenge Asia Champion.
Reigning Macau GT Cup – FIA GT World Cup champion Farfus Jr is back with BMW Team Schnitzer. The Brazilian, who was part of the German manufacturer’s FIA World Endurance Championship campaign in 2018/19, drives one of two BMW M6 GT3s in the field. He is joined by fellow BMW DTM driver Joel Eriksson, who races for Macao regular Fist – Team AAI. Audi, the most successful marque in the 11-year history of the Macau GT Cup is represented by five cars.
The Belgian WRT team, winner of the race with Laurens Vanthoor in 2016, fields two Audi R8 LMS GT3s. Laurens’ younger brother Dries Vanthoor, winner of the Suzuka Intercontinental GT Challenge round in August this year, drives a factory car under the Audi Sport Team WRT banner. Charles Weerts, a race winner with the team in the Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe in 2019, races the second entry.
Christopher Haase renews his relationship with the Phoenix Racing squad, with which he won the Nurburgring 24 Hours in 2012 and 2014, while South African Kelvin van der Linde, an Audi factory driver like Vanthoor and Haase, races for Audi Sport Rutronik.
Rising Chinese GT star David Chen Weian, a regular in the Blancpain GT World Challenge Asia, completes the Audi line-up in an R8 fielded by Audi Sport Team Asia TSRT. Porsche has four cars on the entry, each to be raced by a factory driver. Rowe Racing, the German marque’s representative in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup this season, fields a pair of Porsche 911 GT3-Rs.
They will be driven by Laurens Vanthoor and Earl Bamber, GT Le Mans class champions in the IMSA SportsCar Championship in North America this season. Laurens Vanthoor won the race 2016 in his final outing for Audi and has competed with Porsche for the past two years.
Two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Bamber, who was a winner in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia invitational race at Macau in 2013, will be making his sixth start at the event. Chinese entrant Absolute Racing is also running a pair of 911 GT3-Rs for reigning WEC GTE Pro champion and 2019 Spa 24 Hours winner Kévin Estre and Alexandre Imperatori.
Frenchman Estre is returning to the Guia Circuit for the first time since 2016, when he finished second in the race. Switzerland’s Imperatori is also no stranger to Macao after finishing on the podium in the GT event in 2012 and 2013.
Practice for the Macau GT Cup – FIA GT World Cup begins on Thursday, November 14th with qualifying the following day. A 12-lap qualifying race on Saturday, November 16th will set the grid for the SJM Macau GT Cup – FIA GT World Cup, which will run over 18 laps ahead of the Formula 3 Macau Grand Prix on Sunday.
The FIA GT World Cup manufacturers’ title will be awarded to the manufacturer of the car driven by the winning driver.