Championship leader Jules Gounon will race for 2 Seas Motorsport at Intercontinental GT Challenge Powered by Pirelli’s Gulf 12 Hours season finale next weekend (December 8-10).
Fellow Mercedes-AMG driver Luca Stolz is also amongst the four drivers that could still win IGTC’s crown in Abu Dhabi. BMW’s Philipp Eng and Dries Vanthoor lie second and third in the standings, respectively.
Gounon – who leads Eng by eight points – joins fellow factory drivers Fabian Schiller and Maxi Goetz at the same Anglo-Bahraini team with which he contested this year’s Intelligent Money British GT Championship.
“We were able to rack up a race win, several more podium results and a pole position,” he said. “We had many highs and also a few lows, but we always worked together well as a team and finally 2 Seas Motorsport won the teams’ championship. I am really looking forward to being able to race together with my teammates and friends Maximilian Goetz and Fabian Schiller. Of course, I hope that we will do a good job and remain in contention for the championship.”
Stolz, meanwhile, is alongside Maro Engel and Mikael Grenier who share GruppeM’s full-season Mann Filter-backed machine. The German trails Gounon by 18 points but must score the maximum 25 if he’s to have any chance of winning the title.
GruppeM is also responsible for Mercedes-AMG’s third and final Pro nomination. DTM driver Lucas Auer is joined by Frank Bird and Lorenzo Ferrari who were picked for the Gulf 12 Hours after impressing during the Mercedes-AMG Young Driver Test at Valencia.
Four more Mercedes-AMGs will compete at Yas Marina Circuit. However, it’s the familiar colours of SunEnergy1 that complete IGTC’s nomination list. Team owner Kenny Habul hasn’t raced since injuring his back at the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa but returns alongside regular co-driver Martin Konrad as well as factory aces Dominik Baumann and Philip Ellis.
Only Mercedes-AMG’s two highest finishing IGTC nominations can score points towards a manufacturers’ championship that BMW currently leads by nine.
