Mercedes-AMG has confirmed its 12-car roster for the 2025 running of the 24 Hours of Spa.
The German marque’s eight entries in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup are being joined by an additional four cars at the series’ blue-riband event, which takes place from 25-29 June.
In Pro, Super GT outfit Goodsmile Racing will field the #00 AMG GT3 Evo for 3x GT300 champions Tatsuya Kataoka and Nobuteru Taniguchi, and 2x FIA World Endurance Champion Kamui Kobayashi.
The Japanese team last contested the race in 2019, and joins Mercedes-AMG’s three regular Pro squads in attempting to secure the marque a fifth 24 Hours of Spa triumph.
Maximilian Götz, Mikaël Grenier and Maxime Martin will share Botusen VDS’ #9 AMG GT3 Evo, with Jules Gounon, Fabian Schiller and Luca Stolz driving the #17 Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed entry.
Lucas Auer, Matteo Cairoli and Maro Engel will compete in the Winward Racing-run #48 Mercedes-AMG Team MANN-FILTER AMG GT3 Evo.
Winward Racing will also compete in the Gold Cup, with the #57 AMG GT3 Evo as an additional entry for Spa. 2024 IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup GTD winners Indy Dontje, Philip Ellis and Russell Ward will look to add victory at Spa to their triumphs at the 2024 24 Hours of Daytona, and the 2024 and 2025 12 Hours of Sebring.
Winward’s three-car effort is completed by the #81 of Daan Arrow, Marvin Dienst, Gabriele Piana and Rinat Salikhov, which competes in the Bronze Cup.
Nordique Racing makes its 24 Hours of Spa debut with the #611 entry of Kazuto Kotaka, Edoardo Liberati, Yuichi Nakayama and Tim Sandtler. Notably, the team competed in Pro at the GT World Challenge Europe season opener, but has moved to the Gold Cup for Spa.
Defending Silver Cup winners GetSpeed field two cars in the class, the #3 for Anthony Bartone, Karol Basz, Tom Kalender and Yannick Mettler, and the #6 for Colin Caresani, Lin Hodenius, Tanart Sathienthirakul and Aaron Walker.
Joining them in Silver is the #10 Boutsen VDS entry of Loris Caribou, Hugo Cook, César Gazeau and Aurélien Panis.
British GT GT3 championship leader 2 Seas Motorsport is making a one-off appearance in the Bronze Cup, with the #222 AMG GT3 Evo for Isa Al Khalifa, Kiern Jewiss, Kevin Tse and Lewis Williamson. The Bahraini outfit also fields the #33 Verstappen.Com Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo in the Gold Cup.
The Mercedes-AMG fleet is rounded out by the #4 CrowdStrike by SPS entry, which will defend Pro-Am victory with an unchanged driver line-up of Colin Braun, Nick Catsburg, Ian James and George Kurtz. The effort has a new service partner for this year, with SPS Performance replacing Riley.
“The 24 Hours of Spa is the biggest GT race in the world. As a manufacturer, you want to win such a prestigious event,” commented Head of Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing Stefan Wendl.
“We have a line-up capable of winning with four Pro cars. So overall victory is the clear objective for us. We also want to defend the Coupe Du Roi. Last year, we won in three classes for the first time. And this year, we are again strongly represented in all the individual classifications.”
The full 24 Hours of Spa entry list is expected to be released tomorrow, during the opening day of the two-day Prologue test.
Image courtesy of SRO/JEP and Mercedes-Benz
