Buus and Feller lead the Sprint Cup for the first time after a weekend that cost Team WRT everything
One round left at Barcelona, 35 points on the table and the top four covered by 9.5
Bastian Buus and Ricardo Feller left Zandvoort leading the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup for the first time this season. They did it with a second place, and they did it because the two crews ahead of them both had a weekend to forget.
One round is left. Barcelona pays out 35 points, and the gap from first to fourth is 9.5.
Second place was enough to take the lead
Buus brought the number 80 Lionspeed GP Porsche home 3.700s behind the winning Emil Frey Ferrari in Race 2. Twelve points. Buus and Feller arrived at Zandvoort on 47, joint third, and leave on 59.
They scored nothing in Race 1 on Saturday, which makes the swing look even stranger. A single second place moved them from third to first because Daniel Juncadella took one point and Charles Weerts and Kelvin van der Linde took none at all.
Juncadella and the AF Corse pair are level on 53
Juncadella came to Zandvoort leading the Sprint Cup on 52. He finished Race 1 fourth for 7.5 points, then ninth in Race 2 for one. That is 8.5 points from a weekend where his nearest rival took 12 in a single afternoon.
Thomas Neubauer and Arthur Leclerc did the steadier job in the number 50 AF Corse Ferrari, fifth in both races, six points each time. They go to Barcelona level with Juncadella on 53, six behind the lead.
Team WRT scored nothing with the car that was fighting for the title
The number 32 of Weerts and van der Linde retired from Race 1 with a technical failure and finished 15th in Race 2, outside the points. Zero from the weekend. They were second in the standings on Saturday morning and they are fourth now, on 49.5.
Team WRT’s weekend was worse than that. The number 31 was pushed out of Race 2 at the Hugenholtzbocht, which we covered in our piece on the corner that shaped the round. Only the number 46 of Valentino Rossi and Max Hesse delivered, fourth on Sunday for 7.5 points.
Vermeulen and Green made the biggest jump of anyone
Winning is worth 16.5 points, and nobody moved further this weekend than the Emil Frey Racing pair. Thierry Vermeulen and Ben Green arrived on 23.5 and leave on 40, which lifts them from tenth to sixth. It does not put them in the title fight, but it is the difference between a season that fades out and one that ends with a trophy.
The Sprint Cup standings as they now stand
These totals are our own calculation from the official amended Race 2 classification and the published points scale. SRO’s standings page had not been updated past Race 1 at the time of writing.
| Pos | Drivers | Car | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bastian Buus / Ricardo Feller | 80 Lionspeed GP | 59 |
| 2 | Daniel Juncadella | 3 Verstappen Racing | 53 |
| 2 | Thomas Neubauer / Arthur Leclerc | 50 AF Corse | 53 |
| 4 | Charles Weerts / Kelvin van der Linde | 32 Team WRT | 49.5 |
| 5 | Lucas Auer / Maro Engel | 48 Winward Racing | 42 |
| 6 | Thierry Vermeulen / Ben Green | 69 Emil Frey Racing | 40 |
| 7 | Valentino Rossi / Max Hesse | 46 Team WRT | 32.5 |
| 7 | Jules Gounon | n/a | 32.5 |
| 9 | Dorian Boccolacci | 2 Boutsen VDS | 26 |
| 10 | Morris Schuring | 2 Boutsen VDS | 25 |
Jules Gounon appears on 32.5 points from earlier rounds and took no points at Zandvoort, which is why his car is left blank.
Barcelona pays out 35 points and ten crews can still win
The final Sprint Cup round has two races and two qualifying sessions. A perfect weekend is 16.5 plus 16.5 for two wins and one point for each qualifying session that a crew tops, so 35 in total. We explained how the scale works in our Qualifying 2 report.
That puts the mathematical cut-off at 24 points. Everyone from Buus and Feller down to Morris Schuring on 25 can still finish the season as Sprint Cup champion on paper. In practice the fight is between four crews, and three of them are within six points of each other.
The overall standings are a separate table
The Sprint Cup is one championship. The overall GT World Challenge Europe drivers’ title, which counts the Endurance Cup rounds as well, is a different table, and the two are easy to confuse. Lucas Auer and Maro Engel lead that one on 128.5 by our count, from Weerts and van der Linde on 92 and Buus and Feller on 89.
Auer and Engel took only two points at Zandvoort and still pulled further clear of Weerts and van der Linde, who took none. The one crew that closed on them was Buus and Feller, from 49.5 points back to 39.5. It is a long way to come back from in the time that is left.
Our arithmetic on the run to Barcelona
Our arithmetic says Buus and Feller do not have to win anything at Barcelona. They have to finish ahead of Juncadella twice, and they have to make sure Neubauer and Leclerc never get a clear run at a win. Six points is one bad first lap, and this season has produced several of those.
The crew we would not bet against is the one on 53 with the two fifth places. Neubauer and Leclerc have finished every race this weekend in the same place, in the same car, without drama. That is usually what a final round rewards.
