Garage59 Delivers maiden overall win for Gold Cup crew at Zandvoort

Text & Images: Rick Kiewiet A cloudy Saturday at Zandvoort began with Morris Schuring giving the home crowd exactly what they had come for, as the Dutchman claimed a maiden Sprint Cup pole position in his Boutsen VDS Porsche after a qualifying session that stayed unsettled until the final minutes. That promise, however, did not translate into victory once the lights went out for the opening Sprint Cup race, with Tom Fleming and Louis Prette instead guiding the #58 Garage 59 McLaren to a hard-fought win that delivered the Gold Cup crew's first outright success of the season, and set up a compelling battle for positions further down the order.

Qualifying

Morris Schuring delivered on home soil, setting a 1:33.730 in his #2 Boutsen VDS Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo to claim his maiden Sprint Cup pole as a blustery Zandvoort morning session went down to the wire. The Dutchman had to work for it too — Tom Fleming's #58 Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo briefly snatched provisional pole before Schuring found more on his second run. Fleming settled for Gold Cup pole regardless, with Tommaso Mosca's #51 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo rounding out the top three after having a quicker lap chalked off for track limits.

Eddie Cheever took Bronze Cup honours in fourth overall for the #93 Ziggo Sport Tempesta Racing Porsche, narrowly ahead of Augusto Farfus's #991 Paradine Competition BMW M4 GT3 Evo. It wasn't a session to remember for several of the title contenders: Charles Weerts could only manage 33rd in the #32 Team WRT BMW, while Daniel Juncadella was 27th in the #3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing entry. The #30 Team WRT BMW of Matisse Lismont and Ignacio Montenegro headed the Silver Cup runners.

Race 1

Fleming wasted no time putting his Gold pole to good use, sweeping past Schuring into Turn 3 on the opening lap to take the overall lead. A Safety Car came out shortly after, but Fleming had built a two-second cushion by the time he handed the McLaren to Prette, who kept his head in a crowded pit lane to retain the lead — despite emerging awkwardly between the #32 Team WRT BMW and Boccolacci's Porsche, and briefly running side by side with the Frenchman on the way out. Prette held on to win by 0.676 seconds, the first outright Sprint Cup victory for a Gold Cup entry. Both cars picked up post-race penalties — the McLaren for the unsafe release, the Porsche for a mechanic still in the working area at its stop — though neither changed the result.

Further back, Simon Birch produced a strong defensive drive in the #914 Razoon – more than racing Porsche, holding off a queue of cars until Ben Green found a way through with five minutes remaining. Green took both Birch and Ricardo Feller's #80 Lionspeed GP Porsche at Turn 1, delivering the #69 Emil Frey Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo its first Sprint Cup podium since Brands Hatch 2025. Birch and Klaus Bachler settled for fourth, with Feller and Bastian Buus classified fifth on the road — though Buus was later hit with a 29-second penalty for loosening his belts at speed, dropping the Lionspeed pair to 23rd and handing Juncadella the Drivers' Championship lead after he and Chris Lulham charged from 27th to sixth, Lulham sealing it with a last-lap pass.

Weerts and Kelvin van der Linde's misery continued with a second straight retirement for the #32 BMW, this time to a water pressure issue, while Mosca and Matias Zagazeta brought the #51 Ferrari home eighth to see their Gold Cup advantage trimmed to 9.5 points. Lismont and Montenegro cruised to the Silver Cup win from pole, wrapping up the season title with four races still to run, and Peter Dempsey took the Bronze Cup for Ziggo Sport Tempesta Racing, passing Augusto Farfus's BMW around the outside of Turn 10 with fifteen minutes left. The only interruption to the race came from a first-lap Safety Car after Carl Bennett spun his AF Corse Ferrari into the path of Amaury Cordeel's BMW at Turn 3, an incident that has earned Bennett a five-place grid penalty for his next start.

Qualifying 2 gets underway at 9:35 CEST on Sunday, with Race 2 to follow at 14:15.