The stellar trio of Lucas Auer, Maro Engel and Luca Stolz pushed the No. 48 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG Team MANN-FILTER to the Endurance Cup championship in the 2026 GT World Challenge Europe season with one race to spare on the calendar.
The No. 48’s fourth-place finish at the Nürburgring this past weekend was enough to mathematically clinch the title for Winward, giving the German-based squad another trophy that can be added to their very crowded cabinet.
A very late shuffling of the order of cars inside the top five of resulted in the Mann Filter Mercedes moving up a handful of spots in the final results of the three-hour endurance race, as their P4 finish was just what they needed to claim the title with only the season finale at Portimão remaining in mid-October.
This Endurance Cup title builds on the amazing 2026 season that the worldwide WWR brand has had to this point, as well as the seasons all three drivers have put together. Auer was present as the fourth man for Winward’s GTD triumph at the Rolex 24 back in January, while Engel and Stolz were two of the four drivers behind the wheel of the No. 80 Winward-Ravenol AMG that won the Nürburgring 24 in May.
Stretching things back to last year, the No. 48 finished one single point behind Rutronik Racing in the Endurance Cup battle to finish second, while they also finished second in the overall title fight to Team WRT, missing out by just three points after their season finale at Barcelona saw them finish outside the points in P13.
For Auer, this Endurance Cup championship is the first of his GT World career, while both Engel and Stolz have one previous to their name when they were also teammates back in 2018 for Mercedes-AMG Team Black Falcon in the Blancpain days.
Also, if it seems strange for a team to clinch the Endurance Cup championship in GT World with still a race to spare you’re definitely not alone in thinking it. However, what Auer, Stotz and Engel managed to do this season was put together one of the most amazing runs in the history of GT racing, not just in the history of SRO competition.
Starting with the six-hour season opener at Circuit Paul Ricard, the No. 48 finished P2 in each of the first three endurance rounds of the year, while also managing to finish no lower than 19th overall in any of the sprint race rounds as well. To reiterate – in a season with nearly 60 entries in the Endurance Cup rounds, their fourth-place finish at The Ring serves as their worst result of the season (what bums!).
So, although the team has yet to claim an overall victory of any kind to this point in GTWCE, this amazing display of consistency put them in position to clinch the endurance championship early, while the full-season duo of Auer and Engel are in great shape to add to their trophy haul through via the overall Pro championship, as well as drivers’ title races.
For both the teams’ and drivers’ overall championship fight, Winward leads the way ahead of the Team WRT duo of Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts; Auer and Engel hold a slim lead in the teams’ title fight with 128 points with KVDL and Weerts close behind at 123.5 points, while the gap in the drivers’ title fight is further apart with Auer and Engel holding a points advantage of 126.5 to 92.
To further illustrate the skill, consistency and to be honest, sometimes the sheer luck that goes into motorsports, it’s amazing that the No. 48 has navigated through all of the chaos and the insanity that can play out in the course of a racing season, not just in the realm of SRO and GT World Challenge Europe, which is sometimes the most chaotic on the planet.
The best example of this is twofold – one, it’s not just the fact that Auer, Engel and Stolz have dodged every single bullet and pitfall on the track lap after lap, it’s also looking at what ills have befell their strongest competitors to their championship run.
Case in point – the No. 007 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin of Nicki Thiim, Mattia Drudi Marco Sørensen have won a pair of races – the opener at Paul Ricard and just recently at The Ring – however they also suffered retirements at Monza and Spa, which in the stretch of just a five-race calendar is a massive blow to any team’s title hopes.
Lionspeed GP, the winners of the 24 Hours of Spa, had a brutal start to their season by crashing out basically about five seconds into both rounds at Paul Ricard and Monza.
Remember what happened at Monza at the beginning and of the race? Yeah exactly, the No. 48 missed out on all of that mayhem.
There are five races total remaining in the season – two sprint rounds each at Zandvoort and Barcelona before the season finale at the Algarve International Circuit – and it’ll be quite amazing to watch the No. 48 continue to perform at a high level, and to see if the stable of drivers can continue this insane run of finishing inside the top five of essentially every race they compete in.
(feature photo via y7_photography)