#3 - Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing - Chris LULHAM/Dani JUNCADELLA/Jules GOUNON - Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO
The cleanest way to solve a driver shortage is to own the team and be one of the fastest drivers on the planet. Max Verstappen ticks both boxes, so the vacant seat in Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing’s #3 car for the GT World Challenge Europe finale at Portimão now belongs to the boss.
SRO Motorsports Group confirmed on Thursday that Verstappen will share the #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO with full-season driver Chris Lulham and Ben Barnicoat in the three-hour Endurance Cup race on 16–18 October. The car runs in the Pro class, which puts the four-time Formula 1 champion on the same grid as Valentino Rossi, a full-season Endurance Cup entrant in Team WRT’s #46 BMW M4 GT3 EVO.
Backfire Racing laid out this puzzle in early September, including the possibility that Max would end up as the answer. Here’s why it played out that way, and why it took more than one calendar change to get here.
A chain reaction that began in the Gulf
None of this happens without the FIA World Endurance Championship’s decision on 28 July to drop its Qatar and Bahrain rounds. WEC chief executive Frédéric Lequien put it down to the situation in the Middle East, and the series replaced them with the 6 Hours of Barcelona on 16–18 October and a Monza finale on 6–8 November.
That move dropped a WEC round on top of a weekend SRO had booked long before. Verstappen Racing felt it more than anyone: its regular Endurance Cup drivers, Jules Gounon and Daniel Juncadella, both have Hypercar seats in the WEC, Gounon at Alpine and Juncadella at Genesis Magma Racing. Neither manufacturer was ever going to let a factory driver skip a world championship round for a GT3 race.
SRO did what it could. The Portimão timetable now has qualifying on Friday at 17:55 local time and the race on Saturday at 17:00, instead of the usual Sunday slot. That sounds like it should be enough. It isn’t, for Hypercar drivers. The WEC’s Barcelona schedule runs two free practice sessions on Friday, with Hypercar qualifying and Hyperpole on Saturday ahead of a Sunday noon start. Portimão and Barcelona are about 1,000 km apart in a straight line. A driver who is needed in a Hypercar on Friday can’t also qualify a GT3 car in the Algarve that evening, and a Saturday evening race only helps if you can be in two countries at once.
The Saturday race still helps some people. It just doesn’t help a team whose regulars spend Friday in Hypercar practice.
The F1 calendar happens to leave a gap
Verstappen’s availability comes from F1’s own reshuffle. Formula 1’s revised 2026 calendar slotted the “Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia” into Sepang this weekend, between Baku and Singapore. That leaves this run of weekends for Max:
- 24–26 September: Azerbaijan GP, Baku
- 2–4 October: Bahrain GP, held at Sepang
- 9–11 October: Singapore GP
- 16–18 October: GTWC Europe Endurance Cup, Portimão
- 23–25 October: United States GP, Austin
- 30 October–1 November: Mexico City GP
- 6–8 November: São Paulo GP
That’s seven race weekends in a row on four continents, and the stretch from Singapore to Portugal to Texas is the hardest part. The Singapore Grand Prix is a night race that finishes late on Sunday, local time. Portimão’s first free practice starts on Friday morning, and once the Saturday-evening race is over, there’s less than a week before the Austin paddock opens. Formula 1 teams normally guard that recovery time carefully. Max is spending his in a GT3 car.
“It is going to be a busy seven weeks, but I will enjoy it,” Verstappen said in SRO’s announcement. “I love the track and being in Portugal, so we will try to have a good weekend.”
Don’t take that as a throwaway line. Verstappen didn’t have to put himself in the car: the team could have hired two more professionals and let him watch from a hotel in Singapore. Choosing to drive in the middle of an F1 run this dense tells you how seriously he takes the GT3 project.
How the #3 car shapes up
Verstappen Racing joined the GTWC grid in 2025, and its second season has been a step forward. SRO credits the team with a first Sprint Cup victory at Magny-Cours and a first Endurance Cup podium at the Nürburgring. Max won’t be a guest star propping up a backmarker.
Lulham brings continuity, since he’s the full-season driver who knows how this car and crew run a three-hour race. Barnicoat, described by SRO as an experienced British driver with top-level GT experience, gives the team a reliable pair of hands for the stints Verstappen won’t drive. In a three-driver Endurance Cup format, the race usually isn’t won by one superstar stint. It’s won by the car that doesn’t lose time in the pit stops, the traffic, and the stints in between, and that’s where Lulham and Barnicoat matter as much as Max.
The car isn’t new to him either. Verstappen raced a Mercedes-AMG at May’s Nürburgring 24 Hours alongside Gounon and Juncadella, so Portimão is a matter of learning a circuit in GT3 trim, not learning a new car.
What about Rossi?
Rossi’s season has had something to celebrate. At his home round at Misano in July, the nine-time Grand Prix motorcycle champion took his first GT World Challenge pole in Saturday qualifying, then finished sixth and fourth across the two Sprint Cup races, according to BMW. He has also had a Sprint Cup podium in the #46 car this year. He isn’t on the grid as a celebrity novelty.
Put two non-specialists who are among the most famous people in their sports on one grid, and the temptation is to sell it as a head-to-head. In practice, they’re two drivers on a grid SRO expects to number around 60 GT3 cars, each sharing a car with two other drivers and each racing on a Balance of Performance that’s set to keep BMW and Mercedes close. Comparing their individual stint pace will be more revealing than where the two cars finish.
What to watch at Portimão
- Qualifying is a team effort. Endurance Cup qualifying uses all three drivers, so Max can’t drag the #3 up the grid alone. Compare his segment with the factory GT3 drivers in the Pro field.
- The night stint. A 17:00 start in mid-October means the last part of the three hours runs as the light fades. If the team gives Max the final stint, that’s where it will make the difference.
- Stint lengths versus traffic. With around 60 cars on a 4.6 km lap, how much time each car loses in traffic matters as much as raw pace.
- Austin the following week. If the US Grand Prix goes badly, you know what people will blame first.
There’s a bigger point too. Verstappen has ruled out Le Mans in 2027 but left the door open to the Spa and Nürburgring 24-hour races. A GT3 race in October, at a team he owns, against a strong Pro field, is the kind of race that preparation needs. Before that, though, there’s a Formula 1 weekend at Sepang, and the F1 notebook from Malaysia is where that story continues. For what’s at stake at the front of the championship, read our F1 title math.
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