PAUL RICARD, FRANCE – Oman’s Al-Faisal bin Khalid Al-Zubair, Austria’s Dominik Baumann and Canada’s Mikaël Grenier begin their 2024 Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS Endurance Cup campaign in the Al-Manar Racing by Getspeed Mercedes in France this weekend.
The trio tested their Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo on the 5.791km Paul Ricard circuit in pre-season, and it hosts the first of five endurance races. The series then visits Belgium, Germany and Italy before a finale in Saudi Arabia in November.
Very excited for the race weekend in France. I think we have an extremely strong line-up in the Gold Cup and the package with the team. The whole set-up is something we are all very happy with. Of course, it’s the GT World Challenge and I think this is the most difficult GT Championship in the world. It won’t be easy to get any result. I am quite confident that we can, hopefully, start off strong and keep the momentum going for the rest of the championship.
Al-Faisal Al-Zubair
Al-Zubair missed last year’s Paul Ricard race, where Maro Engel, Luca Stolz and Fabian Schiller drove the Al-Manar Racing Mercedes-AMG to a close second behind the AKKODIS-ASP Team Mercedes of Raffaele Marciello, Timur Boguslavskiy and Jules Gounon.
The Gold category promises intense competition from the Audis of Saintéloc Racing, Tresor Attempto Racing and CSA Racing and from the debuting 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes, fresh from British GT success, within a bumper 55-car entry of GT3 cars from nine manufacturers.
Schedule
Free practice starts at 09:00 on Saturday, April 6, with pre-qualifying at 15:05. On Sunday, April 7, the three qualifying sessions start at 09:45, 10:07 and 10:30, and the three-hour race starts at 15:00.