Lionspeed GP Porsche wins 24 Hours of Spa after pit lane start, as BMW, Ferrari and Corvette victorious in classes

Credit: SRO/JEP

The No.80 Lionspeed GP Porsche has won the 2026 24 Hours of Spa after starting from the pit lane. Thomas Preining, Bastian Buus and Ricardo Feller steered the car to the front of the pack, and eventually to victory.

In Gold the No.998 ROWE BMW of Ugo De Wilde, Tim Tramnitz and Jens Klingmann took victory, with a six lap finishing margin ahead of the next Gold car.

In Silver it was the No.45 Rinaldi Racing Ferrari of David Perel, Rafael Duran, Dylan Medler and Alessandro Balzan who won after a late race battle with the No.30 WRT BMW.

Bronze Cup was dominated by the No.74 Kessel Racing Ferrari of Dustin Blattner, Mathys Jaubert, Dennis Marschall and Ben Tuck. Meanwhile in Pro-Am the No.0 Johor Motorsports Racing (JMR) Corvette of Prince Jefri Ibrahim, Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim, Jordan Love and Ben Green won by three laps.

Read about what happened before here.

As it happened - Final two hours

With under two hours to go Bastian Buus was leading by 12 seconds at the front, but the drama would occur a bit further back in Silver.

Guilherme Olivera in the No.5 Optimum McLaren led the way, but was given a four second stop & go penalty for their technical pit stop during the night being four seconds short. The problem however came from the long drive-through that goes along with that.

After the pit stops, the McLaren dropped to fourth in class, with the No.30 WRT BMW taking over the lead.

Back at the front, 90 minutes remained after the penultimate round of pit stops, with Thomas Preining back in the No.80 Lionspeed car. The lead gap had been cut down to just six seconds to the No.48 of Luca Stolz behind, but he was under huge pressure from Ayhanchan Guven in the No.22 Schumacher CLRT car in the battle for second.

Not long after though, Guven was given a five-second time penalty for the earlier incident with the No.2 Boutsen VDS Porsche, when he damaged the front of that car while they were battling.

The second placed Bronze No.991 Paradine BMW had a dramatic moment, with James Kellet getting a rear puncture. Thankfully for the team, he was near the pits when the tyre let go, so they got back out and didn't lose any positions. They were however, but further away from the class leaders.

Alessio Rovera in the No.51 AF Corse Ferrari put the Ferrari back into the fight for second, putting pressure on Guven with 70 minutes remaining, as Guven was pressuring Stolz ahead.

The No.555 CSA Racing McLaren had some reliability issues on the pit straight, but the race director saw no need to call a FCY. The car got moving again, but quite slowly. He stopped briefly once again on the exit of Pouhon, but he did eventually make to the pit lane with no need for an intervention from race control.

Back at the front Rovera went for a move of Guven and barged his way by. Guven dipped two wheels onto the gravel as Rovera pushed him slightly wide. The Ferrari moved into third place, and started putting pressure onto the Mercedes ahead.

Behind them, there was a battle in Silver for the lead in class. The No.30 BMW of Ignacio Montenegro was defending from David Perel in the No.45 Rinaldi Ferrari. After the final pit stops, the Ferrari jumped ahead of the BMW and into the lead.

Credit: SRO/JEP

Rovera came into the pits with 47 minutes on the clock, AF Corse attempting to undercut the rest of the leading group. Stolz pit on the next lap to cover off the Italian, who was stuck in traffic on his out lap. Due to that traffic, Rovera ended up losing out against the Mercedes, coming out a couple of seconds behind. Guven was next to pit, and he lost even more time after he had to serve his five second penalty.

Preining was the final one of the leaders to come into the pits, and he came in and got out very cleanly. He had a lead of 17 seconds with half an hour remaining in the race.

Rovera was still pressuring the Mercedes ahead, now piloted by Lucas Auer, but couldn't find a way past.

Right at the end, on the final lap, the No.32 WRT BMW of Kelvin van der Linde stopped in sector 2 in the shortcut at no-name corner. Disasterous for a team that was set to score some points from eighth place.

In the end, nothing could stop Lionspeed GP out front. Preining crossed the line after 24 hours of racing to win the 24 Hours of Spa after starting from the pit lane in the No.80 Porsche.

Auer took the No.48 Winward run Mercedes to second after defending from Rovera for most of the final two hours of the race, with Guven catching that duo right at the end but nothing he could do to get his team onto the podium.

In Gold, the No.998 ROWE BMW dominated the latter half of the race to take victory. After a late race battle in Silver, the No.45 Rinaldi Racing Ferrari came out on top, while the No.74 Kessel Racing Ferrari took the Bronze Cup honours. Finally in Pro-Am, the race was won by the dominant No.0 JMR Corvette.