Alex Fontana from the Spa 24 Hours and a return to the GT4 European Series for the most intense weekend of the season

Alex Fontana and Centri Porsche Ticino are ready for the most important weekend of the season: that of the Spa 24 Hours, the blue-ribbon race of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup. Now going into its 75th edition, the Belgian classic has long been recognised as the world’s most prestigious race reserved for cars in the GT3 class. Fontana, with his teammates Ivan Jacoma and Niki Leutwiler at the wheel of the Porsche 911 GT3 R 2023 number 24, will be sharing the track with 70 rival cars fighting for overall victory, but the primary objective will be to compete with the front runners in the Pro-Am class. For this occasion, the crew will be joined by a fourth driver, Nico Menzel, who will lend his support to Centri Porsche Ticino’s Belgian adventure. The epic endurance race on the Ardennes circuit, one of the world’s most demanding, arrives in the wake of the magnificent result obtained in the Paul Ricard 1000 Km earlier in June. That victory confirmed the potential of this all-Swiss racing project with technical support from the Car Collection Motorsport structure. Fontana, a Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS veteran, will also be able to put at the team’s disposition all the experienced gained in five editions of the Spa 24 Hours. Fontana’s weekend will be made all the more chellenging by his parallel participation in the GT4 European Series: this will mark a return to the championship in which the driver from Lugano competed for the Pro-Am with Centri Porsche Ticino in 2022. On this occasion the team will be fielding a second Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS CS, which Alex will share with Patrick Hofmann, together with whom he raced last season and who is a graduate of the AF Academy. At Spa, the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS cars will be in action on Thursday 29 June, with free practice scheduled at 11:20 AM and Pre-Qualifying at 6:20 PM; Qualifying will get underway at 21:20, with the session subdivided into four segments and due to be followed by a further free practice session in the dark. Friday will see the Superpole session at 3:35 PM to define the starting grid, with a warm-up session at 8:35 PM allowing the final set-up adjustments to be made. The race is scheduled to start at 4:30 PM on Saturday 1 July. The GT4 European Series will instead get underway on Thursday 29 July with the two free practice sessions at 2:00 PM and 8:05 PM, with qualifying be held at 11:30 AM and Race 1 at 6:40 PM on the Friday and Race 2 at 1:15 PM on the Saturday.