GetSpeed Mercedes Sets The Pace In GT Open Testing

The 2023 International GT Open Winter Test saw two days of action for 25 cars at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya last week, with GetSpeed’s #77 Mercedes AMG GT3 of Faisal Al Zubair Fabian Schiller setting the pace on both days.

The best time from the car came on the first day of track action, a 1:38.966. The time was almost half a second faster than the best time from the car on Day 2, 1:39.389.

On the first day, Oregon Team’s #19 Lamborghini Huracan came closest to topping GetSpeed, with a 1:40.237. A 1:39.919 from GetSpeed’s second (#786) Mercedes was second in the running on the second day.

In the other classes, the fastest time from GT Cup was also set on the first day, a 1:45.951 by Kessel Racing’s #69 Ferrari 488 Challenge. The only Trophy class car testing was the #07 Aston Martin Vantage AMR from Street Art. Its best time was a 1:53.490 on Day 1.

The 10 60-minute sessions on the circuit, this year without the chicane, provided the teams present with a chance to prepare for the season ahead. In particular, it was a chance for a handful of teams to get up to speed with new-for-2023 machinery.

Racing One officially joined the series at the test and became the first team to run a new Ferrari 296 in a GT Open event. The team had Jody Fannin at the wheel in a one-off role.

The German squad was present also with its 488 for Jacob Schell-Stefan Aust.

Two other 488s were present: the Baron Motorsport car (with Daniele Di Amato partnering with Ernst Kirchmayr) and one from Kessel Racing, with what will be the Swiss team’s leading pair for the season: former Euroformula champion Niccolò Schirò and Nicolò Rosi.

It was the first appearance for the Lamborghini Huracan EVO2 too, in action in Spain with Team Oregon and Bonaldi Motorsport.

The reigning champion, Oregon Team, was present with its renewed driver line-up for 2023, Maximilian Paul and Pierre Louis Chovet sharting the #63 and Pietro Perolini and Daan Arrow (pseudonym of Pijl) in the #19.

Bonaldi Motorsport completed a shakedown of its new cars on Wednesday, with Milos Pavlović and Sanporn Jao Javanil in the #33 and Sandro Mur and Martin Kodrić in the #32 on Day 2. A fifth Huracán (an Evo 1) was also on track, from Barone Rampante, driven by GT Open returnee Jens Liebhauser and Giuseppe Cipriani.

Greystone GT represented McLaren with its two 720S for Andrew Gilbert and Fran Rueda and the newly-confirmed father-son duo of Stewart and Lewis Proctor.

The Aberdeen-based pair moves up to full-time international GT3 competition from the British GT Championship, where they won the Silver-Am title in 2021. Lewis also raced in the GT World Challenge Europe last year.

“Moving up to the International GT Open is extremely exciting, especially as it will be the first international series I’ve raced in with my Dad,” said Lewis Proctor.

“The level of competition is high, so we all know we’ll have to raise our game to be competitive, but we both know the McLaren extremely well and we’ve already seen from the results that Greystone GT scored in the couple of rounds they did in 2022 that we have everything we need around us to score some good results.”

Elsewhere, a new entry from Eastalent Racing Team saw Simon Reicher at the wheel of its #23 Audi R8 LMS. Street Art Racing also brought a GT3 car to a GT Open event ahead of its second season in GT Open. There Jahid Fazal-Karim made his first appearance in a GT3 car alongside Pascal Bachmann.

Four Mercedes AMG were in action, on behalf of Motopark and the pace-setter GetSpeed.

At Motopark, Heiko Neumann and Timo Rumpfkeil were joined by the newly-announced South American pair of Diego Menchaca and Marcos Siebert for what will be the team’s first season in the championship.

“I’m very happy and motivated for this new challenge together with Motopark and Marcos,” Diego Menchaca said following the team’s line-up reveal. “Motopark is a team that we both looked up to during our single-seater careers, so to start this GT3 journey together with them is very cool.

“We know we’ve got a bit challenge ahead of us as the championship’s competitiveness has been growing a lot in the past few years, which makes it very motivating. I’d like to thank all the sponsors that made this possible, especially Atman Capital and Escuderia Telmex and of course, Timo and Motopark for pushing so hard to put this project together.”

The season open now beckons, the teams and drivers set to travel to Portugal for the opening pair of races at Potimão on April 28th to 30th.

DAY 1 COMBINED TIMES >>>
DAY 2 COMBINED TIMES >>>

Images courtesy of GT Open