NEW PREMISES AND A STELLAR SPA 24 HOUR ENTRY: THE FUTURE IS HERE FOR TEAM WRT
- State-of-the-art new premises in Bierset housing all WRT activities officially opened today
- Five BMW M4 GT3 EVOs entered at Spa 24 Hour as Vanthoor-S.van der Linde-Wittmann and Magnussen-Rast-Rossi join the party
A new house is always an important milestone in the history of any family: it is exactly with this spirit that the new premises of W Racing Team in Bierset, near Liège, were inaugurated, during an official and friendly opening event.
All WRT’s racing and manufacturing activities are now reunited, and fully operational for a few weeks, in a single location, paving the way for the company’s projection into the future. On the cutting edge of innovation, sustainability, and purpose, the new premises perfectly match the winning philosophy that WRT expresses on racing tracks around the world.
To further stress this guiding principle, Team WRT used today’s opportunity to announce the stellar line-ups of the five BMW M4 GT3 EVOs that it will field next June in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa on 28-29 June.
W Racing Team co-CEOs Kathleen Schurmans and Vincent Vosse, together with Yves Weerts, CEO of the Weerts Group, hosted the inauguration event which gathered around 300 from the racing, institutions, business, and media. Among them, Pierre-Yves Jeholet, Vice President of the Government of Wallonia, Maurice Mottard, Mayor of Grâce-Hollogne (the city of which Bierset is part), Pierre Fillon, President of the ACO, François Cornélis, President of the RACB, and motorsport legend Jacky Ickx.
The new building, located in the important industrial and logistics hub of Bierset near Liège Airport, has been built in little over one year and features 20,475 sqm of working and manufacturing space. It houses all WRT racing and manufacturing activities, formerly spread over five different locations, and the 140 people forming WRT’s staff. The new building has been designed to meet the most rigorous sustainability standards. Seventy percent of the energy required to run the building will be green, renewable (solar and eolic), and produced in-house by the Weerts Group, while the new facility will be able to store up to 60,000 m3 of rainwater, and the waste management plan foresees a recycling rate over 95%. Other features include high-tech insulation, LED lighting with smart controls, and the use of low-impact materials. The focus has also been put on workforce wellbeing, with the building fitted with ergonomic working spaces and offering a fitness center as well as EV recharging stations.
Kathleen Schurmans, co-CEO of W Racing Team, commented: “This new building reflects our drive for innovation and winning, not only on the racing tracks of the world. We have a long-standing commitment to the three pillars of ESG: environment, social, and governance. This new building allows not only to have all our racing and manufacturing activities in one single location, and to bring our commitment to sustainability many steps forward, but also offers our staff a working environment where they can develop at best and feel happy. We have taken up the challenge to be leaders in making motorsport more sustainable with the same passion and determination with which we pursue victory in racing.”
Vincent Vosse, co-CEO of W Racing Team, added: “Today we materialise a dream and make a great leap into the future. Reuniting all the WRT motorsport activities in one single location is something that Yves Weerts and myself had in mind for a long time, as we grew constantly over our 15 years of existence, and now it’s a reality. The advantages of having everything and everybody in a single location are immense: we can interact and react better and faster, and like in racing, innovating and improving are crucial. Regarding racing, we are happy with the great start of the season that we have enjoyed so far together with our great partner BMW, with victories in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bathurst, and Paul Ricard in GT3 racing and podiums in the FIA WEC. But we cannot stop working hard, progressing, and fighting for a second. As you know, a win on Sunday is almost forgotten on Monday morning because you need to focus on the next race, and success only adds more pressure. I am particularly happy that such a special day as today comes with a nice surprise that will delight our fans.”
TWO PRO ENTRIES WITH STELLAR DRIVERS ADDED TO THE CROWDSTRIKE 24 HOURS OF SPA ENTRY
Today’s ‘family event’ is indeed a perfect opportunity to make some newsworthy racing announcements. Team WRT revealed that it will field no less than five BMW M4 GT3 EVOs in the forthcoming CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, the highpoint of the GT3 season and of the GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS.
The two additional cars will bring to three the number of BMW M4 GT3 EVOs entered by Team WRT in Pro, the top class. Car #46 will be entrusted to Kevin Magnussen (DK), René Rast (DE) and Valentino Rossi (IT) while Sheldon van der Linde (ZA), Dries Vanthoor (BE) and Marco Wittmann (DE) will share car #31. All of them, of course, are well-known faces in the WRT family and involved in BMW M Motorsport race programmes.
These two cars will join the standard three-car line-up of Team WRT in the Endurance Cup of the GT World, which includes Gustav Bergström (SE), Etienne Cheli (FR) and Gilles Stadsbader (BE) in car #30 (Silver Cup), Ugo de Wilde (BE), Kelvin van der Linde (ZA) and Charles Weerts (BE) in car #32 (Pro) and Al Faisal Al Zubair (OM), Jens Klingmann (DE) and Ben Tuck (GB) in car #777 (Gold Cup).
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