Brands Hatch Blancpain: Bastian and Neubauer take sensational win
Silver Cup competitors Nico Bastian and Thomas Neubauer took a sensational Blancpain World Challenge Europe win in the Brands Hatch season-opener in their Akka ASP Mercedes, having seized the lead during the pitstops.

Reigning Silver Cup champion Bastian ran a close third early on in his #89 Mercedes, behind poleman and reigning Endurance Cup champion Luca Stolz, who led from the off in his Black Flacon Mercedes, and second-placed Mirko Bortolotti in the Grasser Racing Lamborghini Huracan.
But the AKKA ASP Mercedes leapfrogged them both with a brilliant 43.2s stop, the fastest of the race at that point. This left Neubauer in the lead, which he kept under pressure despite his lack of experience in this category.
The second-placed Black Falcon Merc, which Maro Engel took over for the second stint, closed in on Neubauer’s tail with 15 minutes of the hour-long race remaining, but was not able to get in a position to pass. Neubauer then edged clear in the final minutes to win by 2s.
The Lamborghini in third, which was crashed by Bortolotti in yesterday’s qualifying, fell away in the second stint in Christian Engelhart’s hands. It finished in that place, 10s shy of the winner.
AKKA ASP’s reigning drivers’ champion and former Ferrari and Sauber Formula 1 tester Raffaele Marciello finished fourth in a Mercedes. Marciello passed Clemens Schmid’s Attempto Racing #66 Audi for the place with a minute to go, passing on the pit straight. Schimd, paired with Kelvin van der Linde, finished fifth, just ahead of McLaren Autosport BRDC Award winner Tom Gamble in the #17 WRT Silver Cup Audi, who’d taken over from Shae Davies.
The Pro-Am Cup class was won by Rinaldi Racing’s Rinat Salikhov and David Perel in a Ferrari 488.
The opening round of the Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe season also kicks off a new era for what was formerly the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup. The championship also is now part of the global Blancpain GT World Challenge.
Several Audis were impeded by a multi-car first turn clash on lap 1. Attempto Racing’s Steijn Schothorst in the #55 R8 and Phoenix Racing’s Kim-Luis Schramm in the #5 R8 became beached in the Paddock Hill Bend gravel. Sainteloc Racing’s Steven Palette in the #26 R8 also retired in the pits at the end of the first lap with frontal damage while his team-mate Simon Gachet in its #25 R8 LMS and WRT’s #1 R8 Ezequiel Perez Companc dropped to the back.
Orange1 FFF Racing’s Andrea Caldarelli in the #563 Lamborghini Huracan, running in fifth, got a one-minute stop-go penalty for causing the incident, having made contact with Schothorst’s R8. The penalty in effect cost Caldarelli a lap and he quit shortly afterwards to save tyres for the next race. Perez Companc later got a drive-through penalty for lap time improvements under yellow, as did Gachet and Akka ASP’s #90 Mercedes Timur Bogulavski.

Abril joins top Mercedes GT squad from Bentley
Brands Hatch Blancpain: Engel/Stolz win for Mercedes

Latest news
Five things we learned from Vasseur’s first Ferrari F1 press call
Ferrari has undergone a winter of upheaval ever since it was announced that boss Mattia Binotto was stepping away from the Formula 1 squad.
Live: Watch the first round of WSK Champions Cup
Grand opening of the WSK season for the first round of the WSK Champions Cup from 25 to 29 January at South Garda Karting.
Rolex 24, Hour 12: MSR Acura leads AXR Cadillac at half-distance
Meyer Shank Racing’s Simon Pagenaud led the field as the clock ticked past the halfway mark in the 61st Rolex 24 Hours, with the AXR Cadillac of Alexander Sims, the WTR Acura and the #6 Porsche in hot pursuit.
Rolex 24, Hour 9: Cadillac back in charge, scare for MSR Acura
Chip Ganassi Racing's #01 Cadillac V-LMDh led the Rolex 24 at Daytona at the nine-hour mark, as the Meyer Shank Racing Acura dropped back following a spin for Helio Castroneves.
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
You have 2 options:
- Become a subscriber.
- Disable your adblocker.