It's World Cup time at Macau

The streets of Macau practically never stop, with the Macau GT Cup carrying the GT racing torch amid the heavy restrictions of the COVID years, but this year the best of the best will return to battle as the Guia Circuit will host the FIA GT World Cup after a four year hiatus.

It might be because of the long time without the Macau GT race in the World stage, but the five manufacturers and multiple teams involved decided to send loaded rosters to the competition, with 12 of the 21 drivers being Platinum-ranked, with highly decorated resumes to show and with some of them coming off of title wins last weekend.

Mercedes is the manufacturer that might be with the advantage, having previous FIA GT World Cup winners and sending some of the factory drivers to compete at Macau during the hiatus. Asian teams TORO Racing, Climax Racing and Craft Bamboo Racing will have the company of Team Landgraf coming from Europe, with six cars featuring GT World Cup winner and GT World Challenge Europe champion Raffaele Marciello, his Akkodis ASP team mate Jules Gounon, the factory drivers Daniel Juncadella and Macau triple GT champion Maro Engel, along with Marchy Lee and a name to confirm in the second Climax car.

One can argue that Porsche made even less concessions than Mercedes in order to send the best of their army to Macau, with Luanzhou Circuit, D2 Racing, HubAuto, Absolute Racing and TORO Racing having names like the DTM champion Thomas Preining, FIA GT World Cup winner Laurens Vanthoor, 24 Hours of Spa winner Kevin Estre, Le Mans winner and current Cadillac Hypercar driver Earl Bamber, GT World Challenge Asia competitor Alessio Picariello and Matteo Cairoli.

Despite bowing out of GT racing programs this year, Audi still has a strong contingent in Asia, and FAW, Absolute Racing and Uno Racing Team will field Christopher Haase and an Edoardo Mortara who is looking to add a fourth win to beat Maro Engel in the statistics, along with locals Adderly Fong and Congfu Cheng, who know their way around the streets with multiple participations at Macau.

BMW might have one of the smallest numbers with only two cars, but ROWE Racing and Team WRT chose well who will do the driving, with Augusto Farfus trying to recreate his emotional last triumph with Schnitzer Motorsport, and Sheldon van der Linde, the DTM title holder until Preining's achievement, a reliable name that WRT will count as they also have the tests with their new LMDh car to get busy.

Ferrari is more like an occasional presence at Macau, and while Harmony Racing will field two cars, Weian Chen will try to extract the best of the 488 GT3 against new machines while Daniel Serra, a name highly regarded in the Ferrari factory roster due to his GT prowess in ELMS, IMSA and FIA WEC, will try to quickly put his lack of Macau experience behind him in a Ferrari 296 GT3 that will be doing its first laps around the Guia Circuit.

The FIA GT World Cup that will be part of Macau Grand Prix week will feature 2 practice sessions and a single Qualifier for the 12 laps long Qualifying Race, which decides the order for the 16 laps long Main Race, going from 16 to 19 November.

PHOTOS: FIA