Gaspard Simon closes his academy year at Barcelona as Waberski books a seat at Spa
The first academy winner has not spun once in nine GT3 weekends, Waberski wins a funded Mercedes seat at the 2027 24 Hours of Spa, and three more seats are still to be decided
A year ago Gaspard Simon walked through the Barcelona paddock to introduce himself to GT3 teams. This weekend he is back at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya as a full-season GT World Challenge Europe driver, and it will probably be the last race of his first year in GT3.
The 20-year-old Frenchman was the first winner of the SRO GT Academy, a programme that rewards young drivers for their own performance rather than their results. A few days before Simon’s finale, the academy crowned the first of its 2026 winners: Jarrod Waberski, who has secured a fully funded seat at next year’s 24 Hours of Spa.
A prize of 150,000 euros and a seat at Walkenhorst
Simon won the academy in 2025 through his performances in the Championnat de France FFSA GT. The prize was worth 150,000 euros, plus support from SRO Motorsports Group and the French federation FFSA, and it took him into GT World Challenge Europe with Walkenhorst Motorsport and its Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo.
“A year ago, I had just won the SRO GT Academy as part of Championnat de France FFSA GT, and I actually came to introduce myself to several teams in the Barcelona paddock,” Simon said in an SRO release on Friday. “It’s amazing to see how far I’ve come since then.”
The plan was a Sprint Cup season. His speed in winter testing turned it into an almost complete programme: all five Sprint Cup events plus the first four rounds of the Endurance Cup. Barcelona is his ninth weekend in the car. Since he is not expected to race at Portimão, it is likely to be his last of the year.
Nine weekends without a single spin
Simon’s season has been shaped by a hard financial reality. “I had to handle the pressure of knowing there was no margin for error, because we didn’t have the budget to cover crash damage,” he said. “I’m happy to say that, so far, I haven’t spun or gone off track once.”
The highlights are individual ones: 18th in his first qualifying session at Paul Ricard, the fastest Aston Martin at Brands Hatch, 14th on the grid at Magny-Cours, and within a tenth of team-mate Jamie Day in qualifying at Zandvoort. At Monza he fought with Marvin Dienst.
The results did not follow. His 24 Hours of Spa ended on the opening lap when his team-mate was caught up in a multi-car accident, and a track-limits violation cost him a good lap in qualifying at Misano. “My lap times have often been good, but in a series like this a lot of factors have to come together to achieve a representative result,” Simon said.
His goal for 2027 is another season in GT World Challenge. For this weekend his aim is simpler: this will be “my final race of the season, and I want to finish on a high note while having as much fun as possible.”
Two points between Waberski and Charles Clark
The academy has grown since Simon won it. In 2026 it has three elements, and the most prestigious is a fully funded Mercedes-AMG seat, run by Team Motopark, at the 24 Hours of Spa on 24 to 27 June 2027. Candidates must be FIA Silver-graded and under 30. How those driver grades work is explained in our driver ratings explainer.
Four of those Spa seats are awarded, one each through British GT and the American, Asian and Australian GT World Challenge series. The first went to Jarrod Waberski at the British GT finale at Brands Hatch last Sunday. The 21-year-old Anglo-South African beat Charles Clark by two points; Clark had started the day twelve points behind.
Waberski won British GT’s round at Spa earlier this year, a drive worth the maximum 36 academy points. He finished fourth in the overall standings with Alex Martin, took the Silver-Am class title with him and helped Barwell Motorsport to an eighth teams’ title.
“Winning British GT’s SRO GT Academy seat was amongst my priorities at the start of this year so I am absolutely delighted to already have that in my back pocket heading into next season,” Waberski said. He added that SRO “appears really invested in teasing out the sort of details that can go unnoticed”.
The third element runs through the GT2 European Series, where academy candidates compete for an Endurance Cup seat with Mercedes-AMG Motorsport in GT World Challenge Europe. The team that will run that car has not been announced.
Our view
The academy is built on a simple idea: in GT3, where two or three drivers share a car and one incident can wreck a weekend, the result says little about the individual. Simon’s season proves the point. No spins, no damage, regular top lap times, and still no result to show for it.
That is also the weakness. A team looking for a 2027 driver reads the results first, and Simon’s debut year does not look like much on paper. Barcelona is his chance to give the numbers a result to match. For Waberski the pressure starts later: one race, at the biggest GT3 race in the world, in a Mercedes-AMG instead of the Lamborghini he raced in British GT.
Should young GT drivers be judged on their lap times or on their results? Tell us in the comments.
Barcelona this weekend, three more seats to come
The Sprint Cup finale at Barcelona has Race 1 on Saturday at 14:00 and Race 2 on Sunday at 16:00 local time, with the drivers’ title still open. Read our preview of the title fight, check the full entry list, or start with our GT World Challenge Europe explainer.
The other academy seats follow later this year. Asia’s contest continues on the streets of Beijing this weekend and ends in Shanghai in early November. America decides at Indianapolis in two weeks, and Australia names the fourth winner in Adelaide at the end of November.
