Steller Motorsport battles at Brands Hatch on Sprint Cup debut with Corvette

Steller Motorsport battles at Brands Hatch on Sprint Cup debut with Corvette

Steller Motorsport marked its Sprint Cup debut in the 2025 GT World Challenge Europe Powered by AWS championship this weekend - which took place on the iconic GP layout of the UK’s historic Brands Hatch circuit - finishing eighth and seventh with its Corvette Z06 GT3.R in the highly competitive Silver Class across the two one-hour races.

With Belgian Matisse Lismont joined by Fin and Steller debutant Jesse Salmenautio, the team battled hard to achieve the results on a weekend that was always going to prove difficult, given the unique set of challenges a circuit like Brands Hatch poses. With its narrow, bumpy, and undulating layout, it offered a stark contrast to the flowing expanses of Paul Ricard - where the team celebrated a podium finish in the opening round of the Endurance Cup - and other preseason testing venues such as Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Despite limited testing time available on the Brands Hatch GP circuit and a first visit to the track with its new Corvette, the team worked to make setup improvements from the moment the car entered the circuit for the first time in practice. Despite two very different races, with race two punctuated by full-course yellows and safety car interventions, the team scored solid results from which to build on for the rest of the season.

Attention now turns to the two-day test at Spa Francorchamps in a little over a week’s time, ahead of the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa in June. The test presents a chance for Steller Motorsport to get more miles on its Corvette Z06 GT3.R machines, bolstering its databanks for the rest of the 2025 campaign.

Matisse Lismont said, “I think everyone knew it was going to be a challenging weekend, but I have to say everyone did their maximum to progress and make the best out of it. We got a lot of data for future races and take a lot of learnings from this weekend for the rest of the sprint series. And, of course, racing at Brands Hatch will always be special.”

Jesse Salmenautio said, “Brands was always going to be the toughest track for us so, but, despite the the difficulties everybody did their best. We’ve got some work to do to get ourselves in the mix for podiums but we know the potential is there.”

Team manager Max Daymond said of the weekend, “Coming to Brands with a brand-new car and no historical data was always going to be tough. It’s a unique circuit: it’s narrow, tight, bumpy, and very different to the kind of tracks we tested on during preseason and worlds away from Paul Ricard. So, it was always going to be a steep learning curve, but, that said, we made solid progress across the weekend and have a much better understanding of where we need to improve going forwards.

“We’ll be testing at Spa in just over a week, which will help us with a setup for the 24-hour race in June, but also just with our general understanding of the Corvette for the rest of the season.”