Porsche stars back together in bid for repeat Spa success

Porsche factory drivers Kevin Estre, Michael Christensen and Richard

Lietz will return to the Spa 24 Hours in a bid to become the first repeat winners of the Belgian enduro for more than a decade. The World Endurance Championship regulars will race for Hong Kong entrant KCMG after winning last year’s event with GPX Racing.

The trio have been called up to drive one of two Porsche 911 GT3-RS fielded by KCMG (above), which also contested last month’s Nurburgring 24 Hours with factory backing. They will contest the double-points round of the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup on 24-25 October alongside Alexandre Imperatori, Edoardo Liberati and Josh Burdon, who all raced for the team at the ’Ring.

“It’s good to be back to defend our crown at Spa with the three of us,” said Estre. “We said at the beginning of the year that we’d like to go back together, and Porsche always likes to keep its driver line-ups together.”

The preparations for Estre and his team-mates have been limited, just like last year, as they bid for the first back-to-back victories at Spa since Eric van de Poele and Michael Bartels triumphed in a Vitaphone Maserati MC12 in 2005-06, sharing with Timo Scheider in 2005 and Andrea Bertolini in 2006. Not since 1979-80, when brothers Jean-michel and Philippe Martin won driving for Ford, has the same line-up triumphed at

Spa in consecutive years.

“It’s going to be very similar to last year when we only had one test day to prepare for the race with a team we didn’t know,” said Estre, who drove together with his team-mates on one day of the official pre-event test last month. “It’s definitely one of the hardest races in the world but we can fight for the overall win.”

Estre, Christensen and Lietz have joined an eight-strong line-up of Porsches in the pro class at Spa, which makes the marque the strongest numerically in the top division.

Dubai entrant GPX is now a regular in the top category of the GTWCE enduros and will field a familiarlooking line-up. Works drivers Patrick Pilet, Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell will share one car as usual, while Louis Deletraz will make his second appearance of the season alongside Romain Dumas and Thomas Preining. Dennis Olsen, who drove for GPX at the Nurburgring GTWCE enduro in September, has moved across to the Frikadelli Porsche squad and will drive alongside Timo Bernhard and Frederic Makowiecki.

Two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Bernhard, who back in June scratched plans for his own team to race at Spa, will be making his second GTWCE appearance of the season despite announcing his retirement from the cockpit at the end of last year.

Rowe Racing also takes two

Porsches to the race, with Nick Tandy – runner-up in 2019 with the squad – partnering fellow factory drivers Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor in one of the cars.

The pro class comprises exactly half the 56-car Spa entry this year, with cars from 10 of the 11 manufacturers represented in the race. A total of 39 cars are registered to score points in the Intercontinental GT Challenge, of which the race is round three of four.