Bentley Motorsport has announced that Californian GT3 team K-PAX Racing is set to compete in the 2018 Pirelli World Challenge season with three Bentley Continental GT3s.
The team, which has won seven PWC titles in 10 years – most recently as a McLaren customer team with factory driver Alvaro Parente – says it’s made the switch due to the allure of the new Continental GT3. The Crewe-based marque’s new model was launched earlier this year and is set to be available to order by customers midway through the 2018 season after its testing and development phase.
“At the end of each season, we evaluate the performance of our team and our programme as well as what the future looks like,” commented K-PAX Racing programme manager Darren Law.
“With the introduction of the new Bentley Continental GT3, we see a lot of potential. Currently, we are in the process of finalizing K-PAX’s 2018 driver line-up and will be making an announcement soon. We look forward to joining the Bentley Motorsport family and continuing our success beginning with next season.”
Signing K-PAX is part of a big push in North America for Bentley, Tom Hodgson, Bentley’s North American race programme manager explaining to DSC that it’s the first part of a big expansion for the brand over the next few years. DSC understands that the 2018 car is set to be produced in numbers far greater than the current model.
“It’s great to sign K-PAX,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming as we first spoke towards the end of last season. They’ll run the current car all of next season, and if that goes well then we plan that they’ll step up to the new car for 2019. This is K-PAX’s programme, though they’ll have me and maybe one other on site at the races from Bentley as assistants.”
K-PAX Racing will not race in World Challenge alongside Absolute Racing as Bentley customer teams. Absolute’s Bentley PWC programme is set to come to an end, the Asian outfit unlikely to race in North America in 2018 after competing in PWC with Bentley the past two seasons.
“Logistically it was really hard for Absolute,” Hodgson, who has worked with Bentley in North America since the end of Dyson Racing’s programme three years ago added. “They were based in Asia and travelling all that way for PWC was really tough on them. So they’ll be looking at Asian programmes with us going forward.
“As for other customers, for North America we’re still looking always open to signing more for 2018 before the new car begins competing in customer hands.”
