A record 44-car field is set to contest the second round of this year’s GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup at Misano, as the Bronze Cup competitors join the action for the first time this season.
The grid for this weekend’s pair of 60-minute races breaks down as 14 cars in Pro, eight in the Gold Cup, 12 in the Silver Cup and 10 in Bronze, and totals one car more than the record-setting 43 entries the event featured last year.
Both the Pro and Gold fields are unchanged from the season opener at Brands Hatch, where the #80 Lionspeed GP Porsche of Bastian Buus and Ricardo Feller claimed an early drivers’ championship lead after victory in Race 2.
The German squad arrives at Misano with plenty of momentum, after scoring the biggest triumph in its short history last month when Buus, Feller and Thomas Preining won the 24 Hours of Spa.
None of the leading contenders managed to string together two strong results in Kent, meaning that the top of the drivers’ standings remains condensed.
Arthur Leclerc and Thomas Neubauer are second in the #50 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo, two points back, with the #48 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO of Lucas Auer and Maro Engel tied for third with the #32 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 Evo of defending champions Charles Weerts and Kelvin van der Linde, five points off the lead.
WRT should be the team to beat this weekend, with the Belgian squad holding the remarkable record of 13 wins in the past 17 Sprint Cup races at Misano. Three of those victories were scored by Valentino Rossi, who currently sits sixth in the drivers’ standings alongside Max Hesse, and is arguably the best hope of an Italian triumph on home soil.
Elsewhere, Garage 59 is returning to the venue where it claimed McLaren’s first Sprint Cup win in a decade one year ago, and will be looking to establish its title credentials after a difficult time at Brands Hatch, whilst at one of the circuits which played a key part in the car’s development Rutronik Racing will be hoping to take another step forward with its Lamborghini Temerario GT3.
It will be an emotional round for Boutsen VDS, meanwhile, with the Belgian outfit making its first start since the passing of Marc van der Straten earlier this month. It will run a Marc VDS Racing livery on its #2 Porsche in tribute.
In the Gold Cup, AF Corse’s Matias Zagazeta and Tommaso Mosca have established an early 4.5-point lead over the #555 CSA Racing McLaren of Simon Gachet and Romain Andriolo, with the #163 VSR Lamborghini of Mattia Michelotto and Loris Spinelli in third.
Team WRT’s Matisse Lismont and Igancio Montenegro lead the Silver Cup aboard the #30 BMW, with them two points ahead of the #5 Optimum Motorsport McLaren GT3 Evo of Mikey Porter and Guilherme Oliveira after the pairings split honours at Brands Hatch.
Defending drivers’ champion Jamie Day sits third in the #34 Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo he shares with Mateo Villagomez, and is returning to the venue where he and Kobe Pauwels began their championship charge with a Race 2 victory last year.
Dinamic GT has tweaked the line-up of its #54 Porsche, with Mark Kastelic replacing Loris Cabirou alongside Tanart Sathienthirakul. Both the #9 Pure Racing and #914 Razoon – more than Racing Porsches, meanwhile, feature ‘TBA’ slots in their line-up alongside Aliaksandr Malykhin and Simon Birch respectively.
And the Bronze Cup has attracted a 10-car entry for its first Sprint event of the season, with the #89 Lionspeed GP Porsche absent after appearing on the season-long entry list earlier this year.
Defending champion Kessel Racing has a two-car entry, with Dustin Blattner and Dennis Marschall returning to the #74 Ferrari, whilst Marco Pulcini and David Fumanelli will share its #27 entry.
Ziggo Sport Temepsta Racing has confirmed Peter Dempsey as its Bronze-rated driver in the #93 Porsche, whilst Cabirou has switched from Dinamic GT’s Silver Cup effort to share its #55 Porsche with Dmitry Gvazava, who won at Misano aboard a Lamborghini last year.
Although the Sprint Cup opener for Bronze, the three Endurance Cup races to-date have already shaped the season-long championship, and with it the fight for an automatic invitation to the 2027 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Blattner and Marschall currently have a 22-point lead over Paradine Compettition’s Darren Leung and James Kellett after winning the 24 Hours of Spa, with the next best of the full-season entries, the #87 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG of Marvin Dienst and Rinat Salikhov, a further 25 points behind.
Leung will share his #991 BMW with Augusto Farfus in the Sprint Cup rounds, meaning the Briton will target the title solo.
The second round of the 2026 GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup will take place at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, Italy from 17th to 19th July 2026.
A pair of 80-minute Free Practice sessions will take place on Friday 17th, before Qualifying 1 and Race 1, a night race starting at 20:30 CEST, take place on Saturday. Sunday sees a return to a more standard Sprint Cup timetable, with Qualifying 2 in the morning before Race 2 at 14:30 CEST.
Images courtesy of SRO/JEP and Frozenspeed
