A crowd of 23,257 packed Brands Hatch this weekend for the GT World Challenge Sprint Cup season opener. The racing delivered exactly the kind of drama the centenary-year circuit deserved. Ferrari and Porsche each claimed a victory across two 60-minute races, but neither result came without a twist.
Arthur Leclerc and Thomas Neubauer took Race 1 for AF Corse — except they didn’t actually cross the line first. The #3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing entry did, only to have the win stripped by a post-race penalty. That handed Leclerc his first series victory, with less than a second separating him from Porsche’s Dorian Boccolacci in the #2 Boutsen VDS car.
The finish sheet rarely tells the full story at Brands Hatch. Defending champions Charles Weerts and Kelvin van der Linde carved from 12th on the grid to finish third, while Winward Racing’s #48 Mercedes-AMG clawed its way from 15th to fifth. The GP circuit rewards aggression, and these crews brought it.
Race 2 belonged to Lionspeed GP’s Bastian Buus and Ricardo Feller in the #80 Porsche, a lights-to-flag win that felt like payback. The same car had dominated Race 1 from pole before a mechanical failure forced it into retirement. No such cruelty the second time around.
Buus and Feller now hold the early Sprint Cup points lead, the kind of advantage that matters in a short-format championship where consistency is everything. Verstappen Racing recovered to finish second in Race 2, proving the pace that earned the initial Race 1 result was no fluke even if the penalty wiped it from the record. Winward Racing grabbed another top three.
Valentino Rossi and Max Heese finished an agonizing fourth, close enough to taste the podium champagne. Away from the racing, the weekend hummed with the particular energy Brands Hatch generates when the weather cooperates and the grandstands are full. Thousands flooded the pit lane Sunday morning for an autograph session that has become a signature event.
Drivers were lined up and accessible. Mechanics worked on cars in open garages just feet away. No velvet ropes, no bottle service — just fans and racing teams sharing the same concrete.
SRO Motorsports Group used the occasion to announce a contract extension keeping Brands Hatch on the Sprint Cup calendar through at least 2028. The deal with circuit owner MotorSport Vision continues a relationship stretching back exactly 30 years to the BPR Global Series’ first visit in 1996. That lineage matters at a track celebrating its 100th birthday.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic at Laguna Seca, BMW M Team WRT reminded the IMSA paddock it still has teeth. Philipp Eng and Marco Wittmann drove the #25 BMW M Hybrid V8 from deep in the field to a third-place finish, matching their result from Daytona earlier this season. Two podiums from the first two rounds is solid LMDh progress for a program that has been building momentum quietly.
Turner Motorsport added to the BMW haul with an IMPC class win in the M4 GT4 EVO, a result that underscores the depth of BMW’s customer racing pipeline even as its factory effort chases prototype glory.
The Sprint Cup now moves on from Britain, but the early picture is clear: Ferrari’s young talent is real, Porsche’s depth is formidable, and Mercedes-AMG has the speed but needs cleaner weekends. Three manufacturers, two races, zero repeat winners. The season is exactly where it should be.
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