ST Racing has announced that they will return to the SRO GT World Challenge America series in 2024, to compete in the Pro-Am class with drivers Samantha Tan and works driver Neil Verhagen behind the wheel of the #38 M4 GT3.
The 2024 season will be ST Racings second consecutive full season in GT World Challenge America, and they have momentum coming into the new year. The team came on strong in the second half of the 2023 season, getting their first win at Road America in mid-August and finishing second in four other races from the VIR rounds in mid-June through the end of the year.
The pairing of Samantha Tan and Neil Verhagen should be a strong one. Tan has adapted well to the M4 GT3 over the last few seasons and has shown herself to be quick and consistent, while Verhagen (who drove for ST Racing from round four onwards in 2023) proved to be one of the fastest drivers in the series. 2024 will be Verhagen’s first full season of racing in the US after spending of his sportscar career racing in Europe since joining BMW as a junior driver in 2020.
Team Principal and co-owner Kenneth Tan is excited at the prospect of having daughter Samantha drive with Neil Verhagen for a full season after the two worked so well together in 2023. “Say it isn’t so, Joe! That’s what I was lamenting at the end of our 2023 campaign in SRO GTWC America,” he said. “There was something amiss between the championship results compared to the efforts and performance put in by the team. There was a gap and I felt we should have fared better than where we finished given our performance. Thus, there was no choice but to go back in 2024 with the same crew and driver line-up. Samantha found her groove driving with Neil Verhagen late in the season. We are coming back to prove again that ours is a winning formula. Vamonos!”
The SRO GT World Challenge season kicks off on April 5th-7th at Sonoma Raceway in California. Samantha Tan will be racing sooner than that, as she’s one of the drivers on the Century Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 entry in the 24 Hours of Dubai race coming up on January 26th-28th.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy SRO]
