GT World Challenge powered by AWS returns to action this weekend at Misano with one-hour Sprint Cup races on Saturday evening (20:30) and Sunday afternoon (14:30). The Italian track has been on the calendar for more than a decade and produced plenty of drama over the years. Here are five of the best from the Adriatic coast.
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2025 (Race 1) – Vale & Lello's Winning One-Off
Valentino Rossi only made one Sprint Cup appearance in 2025 – and he made it a good one. The Doctor took his best-ever qualifying result, lining up P3 on the 43-car grid. He stayed there for the opening stint – behind the Ferraris of Alessio Rovera and Dennis Marschall – before handing over to Raffaele Marciello.
Lello was also making his first Sprint Cup start of the year and his first in a BMW. Emerging from the pits in second, he had the task of chasing down and passing Vince Abril, who had taken over the leading Ferrari from Rovera.
Marciello was able to get a run on the circuit's long back stretch, drafting on to the rear of the Ferrari and threatening a move in Turn 13. He launched his decisive attack with just five minutes left on the clock; Abril gave everything he had to retain the lead, but the BMW simply could not be stopped. From there Marciello was able to pull away to win by 1.5 seconds.
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4
2019 (Race 2) – Weert's Redemption
Charles Weerts experienced a rollercoaster weekend at Misano in 2019. On Saturday, his mistake cost his team a potential win when, running in P2, he lost the rear of his car and spun into the gravel. He was just 18 at the time and such errors were an inevitable part of the learning curve. Still, for a competitor like Weerts, it had to hurt.
The following day, he claimed his maiden series victory alongside Dries Vanthoor. It was the mark of a champion - a four-time champion, in fact. Misano would become Weerts’ happiest hunting ground, with eight wins and counting for the Team WRT driver. The old maxim is true: it’s not how you fall; it's how you get back up.
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3
2023 (Race 1) – Unstoppable Lello
Raffaele Marciello did some very special things in the Sprint Cup. The Swiss-Italian was especially good at Misano – as demonstrated by his 2025 pass on Abril – but 2023 was probably his most dominant showing.
The rest of the grid must have felt pretty disheartened when Lello posted a qualifying lap record of 1m30.762s (which stands to this day). The sense of inevitability would have increased when he pulled clear of the chasing pack, never looking to be under any pressure.
Misano was also a strong track for Marciello’s long-time Sprint Cup teammate Timur Boguslavskiy. With both drivers on form in 2023, the Mercedes-AMG duo scored one of their most commanding wins, with the Russian taking the chequered flag by more than seven seconds.
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2
2016 (Race 1) – Bentley's Barnstormer
No one wins from below P3 at Misano. Well, almost no one. In 2016 the Italian track opened the Sprint Cup season and saw Bentley Team M-Sport duo Andy Soucek and Maxime Soulet make their debut in the series.
They lined up ninth for Race 1 – which, at the time, was known as the Qualifying Race as it set the grid for Race 2 (the Main Race). But with rain beforehand making tyre choice a gamble, they took a risk and chose wets for their Continental GT3. Soucek then seized upon a well-time full-course yellow to make his stop, allowing Soulet to resume at the head of the field.
He was chased by the BMW of Philipp Eng, but the Belgian had enough to make the advantage stick. This gave the British squad a winning start to its Sprint Cup career – but it was a false dawn, as neither the team nor the car ever won another in the short-format series.
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1
2023 (Race 2) – Vale's Brilliant Breakthrough
It had to be, didn’t it? Valentino Rossi’s first GT World Challenge victory was a seismic moment for the legendary Italian, who has freely admitted that – up to this point – he was unsure whether he could compete at the highest level of GT racing.
That question was answered in no uncertain terms when Rossi and Maxime Martin combined to secure the win in 2023. The #46 Team WRT BMW ran second to the sister #32 car during the opening phase, but jumped to the lead during the pit window. Could Rossi handle the pressure at the front? Absolutely. In fact, he pulled away at the head of the field to secure a hugely popular win.
There was added significance for both Team WRT and BMW. The win ended an eight-year wait since the last Sprint Cup win for the Bavarian marque, and was the first for WRT since making the switch from Audi.