The Mercedes dark horse gunning for British GT glory

Much has changed since Anglo-Bahraini squad 2 Seas Motorsport was last a full-season entrant in the British GT Championship in 2020. Although it won at Snetterton that year with Jack Mitchell and Jordan Witt, the team’s frequent struggles with unreliability on the McLaren 720S GT3 were a drain on time and resources.

“We were employing really good guys, but all of their expertise couldn’t be used,” recalls team co-owner Nick Cristofaro, “because we were always focusing on having to keep the thing going. Motorsport is all about making things better and faster, where with the McLaren we never had any performance meetings – it was always meetings of how to make things better within that car.”

After exploring options with Porsche, and finding that only one car was available, 2 Seas changed allegiances to Mercedes last year. Then, Cristofaro says, “everything was flipped, we literally just focused on performance.” But plans to field cars in both the Pro ranks of GT World Challenge Europe and the DTM came to naught, and the team ran only a limited programme in 2021, although it won on its sole British GT appearance with Hunter Abbott and Martin Kodric at Silverstone, and claimed two victories from as many weekends in International GT Open with Kodric and Ethan Simioni.

The squad won too on its most recent race outing in January’s Gulf 12 Hours, Kodric, Ben Barnicoat and Cristofaro’s 2 Seas co-owner Isa Al Khalifa following up their victory from the previous year’s event with the McLaren. It’s not a team interested in half measures and, with a significant contingent of former Strakka Racing engineers and mechanics on the staff who have plenty of experience with the car, there’s every reason to expect 2 Seas to be in the thick of