Matisse Lismont and Ignacio Montenegro have wrapped up the Silver Cup and Overall titles in the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup at Zandvoort, adding to the Endurance Cup crown they already held. The Team WRT duo took a win and a second place in class in their #30 BMW M4 GT3 EVO to seal all three championships with races still remaining. It was a very different weekend for BMW’s Pro Cup crews, who left the Dutch circuit with a best result of fourth.

Zandvoort delivered both ends of the emotional scale for BMW M Motorsport. At the penultimate round of the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup powered by AWS, one crew celebrated a championship hat-trick while the manufacturer’s Pro Cup entries were left picking through a difficult weekend.

A clean sweep for the number 30 crew

Matisse Lismont of Belgium and Argentina’s Ignacio Montenegro took a Silver Cup victory in Saturday’s race and followed it with second in class on Sunday in the #30 BMW M4 GT3 EVO run by Team WRT. That was enough to add the Sprint Cup and the Overall championship to the Endurance Cup title they had already secured, completing the set with two race events still on the calendar.

“Today we’ve finally done it: three out of three! We’re the Overall, Endurance and Sprint champions! This means everything to us,” said Montenegro. “I’m really savouring this moment, because it’s my first year in the GT World Challenge and we’ve already achieved our goal.”

Lismont was equally direct about where the credit belonged. “A huge thank you to the whole team, the mechanics and the engineers. I don’t think we’d be where we are now without them,” he said.

Pro Cup struggles on the North Sea coast

None of Team WRT’s three Pro Cup crews managed a top-ten finish across the weekend. Valentino Rossi and Max Hesse salvaged fourth place on Sunday in the #46 BMW M4 GT3 EVO after finishing twelfth on Saturday, and that stood as the squad’s best Pro result.

Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts retired from Saturday’s race and came home 15th overall on Sunday in the #32 car, a weekend that cost them the lead in the Sprint Cup drivers’ standings. Jordan Pepper and Amaury Cordeel retired from both races after collisions the release describes as being through no fault of their own. Despite all of that, Team WRT moved to the top of the overall team standings.

“It wasn’t an easy weekend – especially for the team, who had their work cut out for them with all four WRT cars,” Hesse said, noting that the #46 crew recorded the fastest pit stop twice.

Weerts pointed to qualifying as the root of the problem. “We didn’t manage to get the car into the optimal working window in either qualifying session,” he said, adding that the team still has two races left at Barcelona.

Podium in the Bronze Cup

There was a second BMW class podium from Paradine Competition, whose #991 BMW M4 GT3 EVO carried Augusto Farfus and Darren Leung to second in the Bronze Cup on Saturday, followed by fifth on Sunday. Farfus reckoned the customer entry was the strongest BMW on the day.

“I think we were the most competitive here compared to the BMW M Motorsport Pro cars, even though it wasn’t quite enough for a class win,” the Brazilian said.

In the Gold Cup, David Pittard and Jop Rappange finished seventh and eighth in the #77 BMW M4 GT3 EVO entered by KPX Motorsport.

What it means

For BMW, the weekend underlines how much of its GT3 success now comes through customer teams running the M4 GT3 EVO across multiple classes rather than through the headline Pro entries alone. A Silver Cup pairing taking the Overall Sprint Cup title is a reminder that in this championship the class crews can beat the professionals on consistency. The Pro Cup fight, meanwhile, now heads to the final round with BMW’s leading crew off the top of the drivers’ table.

The GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup season concludes at Barcelona.

Source: www.press.bmwgroup.com