The second round of the 2024 Iberian Supercars and the Campeonato de Portugal de Velocidade will be held next weekend at the Autódromo do Estoril.
The championship level is exceptionally high this year in all categories and divisions, both in terms of the quality of the drivers and the machines on the track. The vast field promises to offer great excitement at the former Portuguese F1 track.
Forty cars will be on track, divided into seven divisions and three categories, with GT4 having the most entries. Twenty-nine dream machines will line up on a starting grid that usually has narrow margins defining the positions.
Racar Motorsport will have the most cars, with five Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4s, boasting two new entries compared to the Jerez round with another car for Nuno Pires and José Carlos Pires in GT4 Pro, and one more for António Lopes and Filipe Videira in GT4 Am.
At Lema Racing, Bruno Pires and Duarte Pinto Coelho will switch from the Audi R8 LMS GT4 they used in Jerez to a Mercedes AMG GT4 from the Slovenian-based team. The second car will be driven by Luís Calheiros and Paulo Macedo.
The Stuttgart-made car is the most represented, with nine units distributed among the JC Group Racing Team, Lema Racing, NM Racing Team, Team VRT, and Veloso Motorsport. Aston Martin also has a strong presence, with eight machines, two from the 2024 version and six from the previous one. Ginetta follows closely with three different models: the G55 and G50, both entered in the GTX division, and the G40, which competes in the TC division of the Turismos category.
Some cars, with just one unit, add to the exoticism of a starting grid that will feature eighteen teams and seventy-four drivers. These include the Audi R8 LMS GT4 of Jorge Rodrigues and Patrick Cunha, the Hyundai Elantra N TCR of Daniel Teixeira, and the single Ligier JS2R of Álvaro Vela and Sébastien Villadary, which will run a new livery in Portugal.
It should be noted that the Iberian Supercars / Campeonato de Portugal de Velocidade is currently the second competition with the most GT4s, only behind the GT4 European Series. This series has been attracting interest from the big brands, with Aston Martin, BMW, Mercedes, and Toyota officially present in the paddock to provide technical support to their teams.
On-track Excitement Right Up to the Chequered Flag
This is only the second round of the season—the Jarama event only counted towards the Supercars Jarama RACE—but it was clear in Jerez that competitiveness and on-track battles will be a constant part of this year’s championship. As seen in the second race of the Andalusian weekend, the top three were separated by less than a second and a half.
Additionally, the balance of paces throughout the pack was evident, with the top six separated by twelve seconds and the top eleven by thirty-three, after almost forty-seven minutes of racing action and twenty-two laps completed.
The fights weren’t just in the top positions; there were also exciting battles in the Cup division, with intense duels between Rui Miritta, who in Estoril will have Tiago Gonçalves as his teammate in the Monteiros Competições Porsche 911, and the similar Tockwith Motorsport car shared by Marcus Fothergill and Dave Benett.
Daniel Teixeira’s campaigns in the Hyundai Elantra N TCR are always interesting to follow, as are the fierce clashes in the GTX division between Tockwith Motorsport’s four Ginetta cars, Chefo Sport’s Ligier JS2R, and Speedy Motorsport’s Porsche Cayman MR.
It is therefore guaranteed that everyone who follows the races, whether at the Autódromo do Estoril or on television, will have an intense experience, given the emotion of this year’s Iberian Supercars and Campeonato de Portugal de Velocidade
