Leipert Motorsport has confirmed that Brendon Leitch, Tyler Cooke, Fidel Leib and Seb Morris, who recently competed for the team at the Hankook 12H HOCKENHEIMRING, will once again team up in the #10 Lamborghini Huracán GT3 at Portimão, and will be joined by fellow Lamborghini Junior Driver Sebastian Balthasar. 

New Zealand’s Brendon Leitch made his first race start in Europe in more than a year at the Hankook 12H HOCKENHEIMRING, and his first start in the 24H SERIES full stop. Tyler Cooke, the only American driver selected as part of the Lamborghini GT3 Junior program for 2021, also made his maiden series start at Hockenheimring in what was also his GT3 class debut.

Leitch and Cooke were joined in the #10 Huracán GT3 by Nürburgring 24 Hours class winner Fidel Leib, and 2017 British GT Championship and former Bentley factory driver Seb Morris as part of a three-race deal for the latter. The quartet impressed on Leipert Motorsport’s first GT3 outing in the series since 2015 by qualifying 3rd and rounding out the overall GT podium. The former 24H SERIES Continents champion even led 57 of the 384 completed laps around the Hockenheimring, despite the Lamborghini’s anti-stall kicking in at the beginning. 

“I thought we’d do better in terms of the result, but when you take into account we had 30kg more ballast than anyone else, a much smaller restrictor on the car and 15 litres less fuel capacity, with a slower flow rate in refueling, the whole team can be very proud of the job we did”, Seb Morris explained post-race. “We also took the decision to give every driver a fair share of driving time – 25 per cent each – which is why I didn’t drive on Sunday as I completed half the race on Saturday. The Lamborghini was perfect and the Leipert guys did an awesome job, since we were racing PRO cars with a PRO-AM line-up. My pace was really strong, other than a small issue at the start, everything else was perfect.”

At the Hankook 24H PORTIMAO on 16-17-18 July, GT3 Junior drivers Leitch and Cooke, Leib and Morris will be joined by Sebastian Balthasar, another Lamborghini Squadra Corse Young Driver Programme. The young German is a former ATS Formula 3 Trophy winner and GP3 Series contender, and most recently competed in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe with Leipert. The Hankook 24H PORTIMAO will be Balthasar’s first entry in the 24H SERIES as well as his first 24-hour race. 

With three weeks to go until the green flag drops in the Algarve, the Leipert Motorsport Lamborghini is one of almost a dozen GT3 entries to have already registered for the event. Other notable entries include MiddleCap racing with Scuderia Praha, a three-time winner of the event, last year’s outright winner Herberth Motorsport, which has entered two Porsche 991 GT3 Rs for Portimão, series stalwarts CP Racing and Car Collection Motorsport, and the returning WTM Racing, which teams with Phoenix Racing for its first 24H SERIES start since the 2020 Hankook 12H MONZA.