Bentley Motorsport added Vincent Abril to factory team line-up

Bentley Motorsport confirmed its factory team line-up for 2016 season. The biggest news is a promotion of Vincent Abril to Bentley Team M-Sport’s squad. 20-year old Monegasque driver has won 2015 Blancpain Sprint Series as a driver of customer team HTP and now he gradiate to official Bentley Boy status.

Abril will share the #7 Continental GT3 with British Bentley Boys Guy Smith and Steven Kane, who have both re-signed with the team. Their first race together will be the Sepang 12 Hours in December, before they compete in the 2016 season that will include Bentley Team M-Sport’s third year of the Blancpain Endurance Series. In sister car #8 again will be international trio of Andy Soucek (Spain), Maxime Soulet (Belgium) and Maximilian Buhk (Germany). Buhk was Abril’s team-mate during victorious 2015 Sprint Series season.

Vincent Abril said: “It has been a very good year for me and, after winning the Sprint Series title this year, my promotion to Bentley Motorsport is a great next step. I’m really grateful to everyone at Bentley Team HTP and to Maxi Buhk for giving me the opportunity to win this year, and can’t wait to race with two guys as talented and experienced as Steven and Guy. I’m looking forward to fighting for the championship with them, but not to battling Maxi on the track!”

Bentley’s Director of Motorsport Brian Gush comments: “Joining the Works team is a natural step for a driver of Vincent’s talent. We were very impressed by his performance this year with Bentley Team HTP, and his championship win was the reward for a strong and consistent season. We have close relationships with our customer teams, and the flow of driving talent between us is one of our key principles for success. I’m confident that Vincent will be a great addition to our established pairing of Steven and Guy and I’m looking forward to seeing what they can achieve together. Retaining our current line-up for car #8 is very rewarding. Andy, Maxime and Maxi have formed a very strong team in the last few months and they’ve all proved an excellent turn of speed. We have high hopes for them next year. I’d like to thank Andy Meyrick for his service to the team over the last two years. He has been a dedicated racer in car #7 and helped us develop the Continental GT3 to the championship-winning machine it is today. We will be maintaining a relationship with Andy and I’m hopeful that we’ll see him behind the wheel of a Bentley on track again soon.”