MOTORSPORT – BAHRAINI-British GT team 2 Seas Motorsport climbed to a podium place in class last night after the first hour of the season-opening round in the 2026 GT World Challenge (GTWC) Europe.
After starting from sixth amongst Pro Cup contenders and eighth on the overall grid, the #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo – operated by 2 Seas in collaboration with Team Verstappen Racing, owned by four-time Formula One drivers’ world champion Max Verstappen – improved to third in their category while running fourth overall.
2 Seas’s other car, their #222 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, remained seventh amongst Bronze Cup entrants while rising to 39th overall after hour one. They started from seventh in class and 44th in the massive 56-car field, which also has competitors in the series Gold and Silver cups.
The GT World Challenge Europe’s 2026 curtain-raiser is a six-hour race held at Circuit Paul Ricard in France.
The chequered flag was scheduled to come down at 1am early this morning, Bahrain time, missing our deadlines.
2 Seas are competing with their two cars – with the #3 entry being driven by Spaniard Daniel Juncadella, Briton Chris Lulham, and Frenchman Jules Gounon; and the all-British triumvirate of Charles Dawson, Kiern Jewiss, and Reece Barr sharing the duties in their #222 challenger.
Juncadella was on track for the #3 crew at the end of the first hour. He was trailing the top three featuring overall pole-sitters Winward Racing in their #48 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, Garage 59’s #58 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, and GetSpeed’s #17 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.
Winward and GetSpeed are also contesting this season’s Pro Cup, while Garage 59 are in the Gold Cup.
Meanwhile, Dawson was behind the wheel for 2 Seas’s #222 trio after the opening 60 minutes had elapsed.
Leading the Bronze Cup at that point were Paradine Competition, competing in their #991 BMW M4 GT3 Evo.
2 Seas, co-owned by Bahrain’s Shaikh Isa bin Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, are competing with their two-car entry for the GT World Challenge Europe’s full 2026 calendar, which features both endurance and sprint events.
This weekend’s meeting is the first of five endurance rounds. Others will be held in Italy in May, Belgium in June, in Germany in August, and in Portugal in October.
Sprint weekends will take place in the UK next month, in Italy in July, in France in July and August, in the Netherlands in September, and in Spain in October.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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