French outfit AKKA-ASP will be again one of the top Mercedes squads in the GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS, and again they will count with the numbers on their favor, aligning three cars in three different classes for 2020.
But the power trio won’t be racing along in all tracks, as only two cars will race the Sprint and Endurance events, while the third will be only for Endurance races, and while the Endurance Cup effort is somehow kept unchanged, the Sprint cup effort sees a reduction of two entries. Betting in multiple classes has the way to go in recent years and will be again in 2020, with the full season cars being in the Pro Cup and Silver Cup classes, while the Endurance-only machine will be in the Pro-Am Cup.
In terms of drivers, AKKA-ASP went with the trusted ones as much as possible, and an indication comes right away with the lineup of the No. 88 Pro Cup car, as Felipe Fraga and Timur Boguslavskiy, who paired to bring AKKA-ASP the Silver Cup title in the Endurance Cup, will have the company of Raffaele Marciello, with the Italian and Boguslavskiy going for all races while Fraga appears as the endurance third driver. Boguslavskiy remains as a Silver-rated driver, but the use of Silvers in the Pro Cup is quite common, with the best example being Dries Vanthoor a few years ago with WRT.
The endurance-only Pro-Am Cup car with the No. 87 will see the return of French goalkeeper and FFSA GT champion Fabien Barthez to AKKA-ASP after a season away, spent with Tech 1 Racing, in which he had a managerial role along being a driver. Barthez will have the company of Jean-Luc Beaubelique, who has a really long time with AKKA-ASP and near misses in the Pro-Am and Am Cups, and Jim Pla, who has his decent mileage in sportscars but is going to his third season in GT3s.
The No. 89, which will be the full time Silver Cup car, will see the biggest driver changes, with Top Race and Ferrari Challenge driver Benjamin Hites joining in and having the company of Lucas Légeret, coming from years of karting and LMP3 racing, and Arno Santamato jumps in as the only driver with solid GT3 experience, with participations with Sport Garage, CMR, Daiko Lazarus and recently Grässer Racing.
The three cars will be in action at the 2020 GT World Challenge Europe debut, which will be at Monza on April 19th.
PHOTOS - AKKA-ASP
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