Emil Frey Racing bounced straight back from missing out on Saturday’s honours, locking out the top two grid slots into a race win as Ben Green and Thierry Vermeulen took the #69 Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo to victory in Race 2 of the GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup at Zandvoort. It capped a big turnaround after Garage 59’s #58 McLaren, driven by Louis Prette and Tom Fleming, had denied the Swiss squad in Saturday’s opener, and it made Vermeulen the first Dutch driver to win overall at his home track since 2014.
Qualifying
Konsta Lappalainen delivered the platform for that result by taking his maiden overall pole in the #14 Emil Frey Ferrari, a 1m33.192s good enough to beat Prette by just over two tenths. It was the team’s first pole in 14 races and continued a run of Zandvoort form dating back to last year. Green backed it up by qualifying third in the sister #69 car, with Max Hesse fourth for Team WRT’s #46 BMW M4 GT3 Evo and Matias Zagazeta fifth in the #51 AF Corse Ferrari. Further back, the title-chasing pairs struggled again: Ricardo Feller’s #80 Lionspeed GP Porsche was the only front-running crew to make the top six, while Chris Lulham’s #3 Verstappen Racing Mercedes-AMG lined up 15th and Kelvin van der Linde’s #32 Team WRT BMW could only manage 22nd, a result compounded by a five-place grid penalty carried over from Magny-Cours.
Race
The race opened under caution after Christopher Haase spun the #84 Eastalent Racing Audi at Turn 3 following contact at Turn 2, the Audi clipping Kobe Pauwels’ #007 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin as it rotated; both cars retired with damage. A second interruption followed shortly after when Nicolas Baert’s #89 Lionspeed GP Porsche was beached in the gravel, triggering a Full Course Yellow. It proved decisive: when racing resumed, Green reacted quicker than Lappalainen and dived through at Turn 7 to snatch the lead from his teammate.
Green pulled out more than four seconds before the pit stops, a gap his crew maintained through the stint change, and Vermeulen went on to control the race from the front. Behind, Bastian Buus undercut both the McLaren and the #14 Ferrari to emerge second after the stops, and although Matteo Cairoli closed onto his tail in the closing laps, Buus held on to finish 1.564 seconds clear. Vermeulen took the flag 3.700 seconds ahead for Emil Frey’s first Sprint Cup win in two years, with Buus and Feller’s second place lifting the Lionspeed pair to the head of the Drivers’ Championship. Hesse and Valentino Rossi completed a strong afternoon for Team WRT in fourth, ahead of the #50 AF Corse Ferrari of Arthur Leclerc and Thomas Neubauer.
The Gold Cup fight turned chaotic behind them. Fleming, who had taken over the #58 McLaren from Prette, tangled with Amaury Cordeel’s #31 Team WRT BMW on his out-lap and spun the BMW, then dived past Tommaso Mosca’s #51 AF Corse Ferrari at Turn 3 to reclaim the class lead a lap later. A 10-second stop-and-hold penalty for the Cordeel incident dropped the McLaren to 25th overall, handing the Gold Cup win, and a healthier points lead heading to Barcelona, to Zagazeta and Mosca.
Oliver Söderström and Arthur Dorison took Silver Cup honours in the #21 Comtoyou Aston Martin after Mikey Porter’s #5 Optimum Motorsport McLaren, which had led the class early, was delayed by a gear-selection problem for co-driver Guilherme Oliveira in the pits. Second in class was enough for Ignacio Montenegro and Matisse Lismont’s #30 Team WRT BMW to complete a clean sweep of the Endurance, combined and Sprint Cup titles. In Bronze, Peter Dempsey passed pole-sitter Charles Dawson’s #222 2 Seas Mercedes-AMG at the start and never relinquished the lead, giving him and Eddie Cheever a weekend double in the #93 Ziggo Sport Tempesta Porsche that moves the pair to the top of the class standings, ahead of Dustin Blattner’s #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari in third despite a post-race penalty for speeding under yellow flags.
It leaves eight crews in contention for the overall Sprint Cup title heading into next month’s decider at Barcelona, with Buus and Feller now six points clear of Dani Juncadella and of Leclerc and Neubauer, and pre-weekend leaders van der Linde and Charles Weerts a further 3.5 points back after recovering from 27th to only 15th. More than 26,000 spectators watched the drama unfold across the weekend at Zandvoort, which marked its 10th appearance on the GT World calendar.
