Spotlight
Spotlight
There are race tracks that leave a touring car little chance. Spa-Francorchamps must be one of them: 7,004 kilometres, the longest straight in classic motorsport behind it, Kemmel straight, Blanchimont — a circuit where power counts and aerodynamics decide the rest. That is exactly why what happened on 24 April in the first qualifying session was remarkable: the fastest lap of the entire field was not set by a GT sports car, but by a BMW M3 of the E46 model line — a touring car from the class up to 3,300 cubic centimetres.
On the cover image: A BMW 635 CSi Group A in works livery at BMW Classic Munich, a sister car of the type in question here. No freely licensed photos from the 2026 Spa weekend are available to us.
2:31.751 minutes. This put Markus Weege not only at the top of his class, but at the top of the overall standings, ahead of Porsche veteran Wolfgang Destree. It was the start of a weekend that offered the black-and-white — sorry, white-and-blue — readership more than the results list initially suggests.
Return after two years
The Spa Summer Classic from 23 to 26 April 2026 opened the eighth season of the TOURENWAGEN LEGENDEN, founded in 2019 — and at the same time marked the series’ return to the Ardennes after a two-year absence. The series last visited here in 2024, then also as the season opener.
In the run-up, 35 classic racing touring cars and Grand Tourisme cars were entered, spread across six classes. 29 drivers took part in the first 25-minute qualifying session. Two sprint races of 25 minutes each were held — the format the series has used for years.
No official spectator figure for the event weekend is available; neither the series organiser nor the circuit operator has published a number. The Spa Summer Classic is a classic racing weekend with several series on the support programme, not a spectator festival on the scale of an Oldtimer Grand Prix — anyone needing reliable visitor numbers must ask the circuit.
Six classes, one timeline
The class structure, revised for 2026, consistently follows the history of the DTM. Classes 1 to 3 reflect its development line, classes 4 to 6 are aimed at participants without a DTM vehicle.
| Class | Eligibility | At Spa |
|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | Original DTM and ITC vehicles 1993–1996 and 2000–2009 | Only verified originals with documented history. |
| Class 2 | DTM touring cars 1989 to final specification 1992 (Evo era) | At Spa purely a BMW affair: M3 E30 against M3 E30. |
| Class 3 | Group A touring cars from homologation year 1982 | The heartland for our readers: M3 E30 and 635 CSi Coupé. |
| Class 4 | Touring cars and GT up to 3,300 cc | Nine starters, the strongest class of the weekend — dominated by M3 E46. |
| Class 5 | Touring cars and GT over 3,300 cc | This is where the “Sexbomb” ran, a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup modified for the class. |
| Class 6 | Cup vehicles | Thomas Ardelt’s MUSIC MONSTER — and in the end the overall winner. |
Who was on the grid with which BMW
The defining BMW appearance came from Carinthia. Herwig Duller’s traditional team from Klagenfurt am Wörthersee arrived with four top-class entry vehicles and placed three of them straight into the top ten of the overall standings in the first qualifying session. Two BMW M3 E46s, almost indistinguishable and practically identical in pace — the organiser aptly dubbed them “The Duller Twins”.
The find shows how far back the trail of the name goes in touring car racing — to a time when the first-generation M3 was current racing machinery. Hermann Duller already appeared on the entry lists of touring car and GT racing in the eighties and nineties, for instance at the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in 1996. Exactly the race where the Klagenfurt team stood at the very top this weekend.
| Driver | Vehicle | Team | Cl. | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Markus Weege (AT) | BMW M3 E46 | Duller | 4 | Overall pole in Q1 (2:31.751) · Race 1: overall win · Race 2: overall rank 2 · full class points twice |
| Herwig Duller (AT) | BMW M3 E46 | Duller | 4 | Q1: overall rank 4 · Race 1: overall rank 3 · Race 2: class rank 2 (shared with Siegfried Kuzdas) |
| Siegfried Kuzdas (AT) | BMW M3 E46 (shared with H. Duller) | Duller | 4 | Race 1: class rank 2 |
| Philipp Mattersdorfer (AT) | BMW M3 E36 | Duller | 4 | Race 2: class rank 4 |
| Francisco Freitas (PT) | BMW M3 E30 (“Art Car” by Luis Liberal) | Private entry, Liberal | 2 | Q1: class best · Race 1: class win |
| Heinz Friedrich Pott (DE) | BMW M3 E30 | Team Heinz F. Pott, Beckum | 2 | Race 1: class rank 2 · Race 2: class win |
| Leonard Batenburg (NL) | BMW M3 E30 Group A, built 1987 | Private entrant | 3 | Q1: class best · Race 1: class win |
| Bas Janssen (NL) | BMW 635 CSi Group A, built 1984 (ex Harald Grohs) | Private entrant | 3 | Race 1: class rank 2 · Race 2: class win |
| Tim Kuijl (NL) | BMW 325i E36 | Private entrant | n/a | Involved in the collision at Eau Rouge on the opening lap of Race 1 |
As in almost all historic series, these are predominantly privately run entries. Duller is the exception: an established racing team with decades of experience, coordinating four vehicles and several drivers — and that is exactly what made the difference at Spa.
Race 1: the Ardennes rollercoaster
The first race delivered the drama Spa is notorious for — and this time, of all places, at its most famous corner. As early as the opening lap, there was a collision at Eau Rouge involving, among others, Tim Kuijl in the BMW 325i E36 and Opel veteran Peter Nickel in the Calibra turbo. Those involved were unhurt, race control deployed the leading car, and a gap opened up between the Porsche front-runners and the rest of the field that no one could close again.
At the finish, Wolfgang Destree and Thomas Ardelt appeared to have secured a Porsche one-two. Then the Belgian stewards intervened: time penalties against both of the top two finishers reshuffled the classification. In the end, Markus Weege in the M3 E46 stood in first place overall, followed by debutant Oliver Menzel and team principal Herwig Duller — two of the three podium places for BMW, one of them for a car driven by its own team principal.
In the class standings, it was a thoroughly white-and-blue day. Class 2 was decided by the Portuguese Art Car of Luis Liberal, driven by Francisco Freitas, ahead of the M3 E30 of Heinz Friedrich Pott. And Class 3, as the organiser wrote, fell prey to two Dutchmen: Leonard Batenburg in the BMW M3 E30 Group A built in 1987 ahead of Bas Janssen in the BMW 635 CSi Group A from 1984.
Race 2: Ardelt strikes back
In the second qualifying session on Saturday, Thomas Ardelt turned the tables: 2:29.249 minutes in the MUSIC MONSTER, that first-generation 997 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup which Uwe Alzen brought to the grid at the 2009 24-hour race at the Nürburgring. From pole, he took his first season win on Sunday.
But behind him, once again, Weege — second overall, ahead of Oliver Menzel in the Falken Porsche. This meant the Austrian collected full points in Class 4 on both race days and left the opening weekend as an early title contender. On Sunday, Herwig Duller confirmed the second class rank that Siegfried Kuzdas, sharing the second M3 E46, had already secured on Friday. Philipp Mattersdorfer, also driving for Duller, finished fourth in class in the M3 E36.
And once again the class wins: Heinz Friedrich Pott won Class 2 in the BMW M3 E30, Bas Janssen took Class 3 in the BMW 635 CSi Group A. Wolfgang Destree, visually second at the finish, dropped six positions to seventh after a time penalty for exceeding track limits — a matter traditionally handled strictly at Spa.
The car with the history
One vehicle from this weekend is particularly worth mentioning for our readership. The BMW 635 CSi Group A of Bas Janssen, built in 1984, is the former car of Harald Grohs — according to the series organiser, the former entry car of that BMW stalwart with well over 60 24-hour races to his name, who is still racing in the series himself this season, at the age of 82, now in an M3 E30.
It’s worth pausing on that for a moment. In 1984, the founding year of the Deutsche Produktionswagen-Meisterschaft, the 635 Coupé was the benchmark in German touring car racing. Four decades later, this exact car is once again driving through the Ardennes — not as an exhibit on a lawn, but in racing action, against an M3 E30 also original from the Group A era. The series organiser itself put it aptly: the two of them evoked the flair of the 24-hour classic on the Ardennes circuit.
This is the essence of the fascination with historic touring car racing, and it cannot be recreated in any hall. A Group A six-cylinder at full throttle up the Kemmel straight does not sound like a modern GT3. It sounds like 1984 — raw, mechanical, without electronic smoothing. And the drivers have to work with what the regulations of the time allowed.
What the weekend reveals about the series
Three observations are of interest beyond the day itself.
- The new Class 4 works. Nine starters straight away, plus the overall pole and an overall win — the category up to 3,300 cc, introduced in 2026 and tailored among other things to BMW six-cylinders, was the strongest class of the weekend.
- Touring cars can beat GT cars at Spa. The fact that an M3 E46 sets the overall fastest lap on this circuit speaks for the balance of the regulations — and for the fact that the series has its classifications under control.
- The stewards take firm action. Two races, several time penalties, the classification changed twice. Anyone who thinks historic motorsport is a leisurely parade lap was taught otherwise in the Ardennes.
What remains open in this report
Spectator figures for the Spa Summer Classic 2026 were not published. We deliberately give no estimate.
The complete entry list is available as a PDF from the series organiser; the BMW entries listed here are taken from the official qualifying and race reports and do not claim to be complete.
The class assignment of Tim Kuijl (BMW 325i E36) is not evident from the reports evaluated.
On spelling: the Spa reports list the Austrian driver as “Markus Weege”, later publications by the same series as “Marcus Weege”. We follow the spelling used in the Spa reporting here.
Conclusion
The season opener in the Ardennes was the most productive round of the season so far for BMW drivers — even more productive than Zandvoort in June. At Spa, a BMW stood at the very top of the overall standings on the first race day, and in second place on the second race day. Classes 2 and 3 were completely in white-and-blue hands on both days, with four BMW class wins in one weekend. And with Markus Weege, a BMW driver emerged from the opener as the first title contender.
One critical point remains: an overall win decided at the stewards’ desk is not the kind of win people tell stories about in fifty years. Weege would in all likelihood have won the first race anyway had the opening-lap collision not held him up — but this cannot be proven. And Classes 2 and 3, each led by just two prominent vehicles, were more thinly populated at the front than the neat narrative suggests.
At the end of the day, though, this is exactly what defines this series: a 1984 Group A coupé, a 1987 M3 E30 and four modern M3 E46s on the same track, on one weekend, driven predominantly by private individuals. Anyone wanting to know why people put six-figure sums into racing cars that bring no prize money cheque only needs to stand at Eau Rouge once when an inline-six from Group A goes up the hill.
The rest of the season
After Spa came the big appearance in the support programme of the ADAC RAVENOL 24h race at the Nürburgring (14 to 17 May) and the Zandvoort Historic Grand Prix (19 to 21 June). Ahead of the fourth race weekend at the Salzburgring (4 to 6 September), two Porsche drivers led the championship: Oliver Menzel with 54.34 points from Class 5 ahead of Thomas Ardelt with 50.7 points from Class 6. Austrian BMW driver Weege, still leading at Spa, had dropped back to third place with 37.5 points after skipping Zandvoort. The season concludes with the ADAC Racing Weekend at the Hockenheimring from 2 to 4 October — where the pilot project PURE GROUP A for racing touring cars from 1982 to 1992 also launches.
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Sources
Research status: 15 August 2026. Details according to the publications listed below; results without guarantee. The official results lists are kept by the series organiser. Where this article provides context or assessment, this is identifiable as editorial evaluation.
[1] TOURENWAGEN LEGENDEN, preview “Summer Classic, Spa-Francorchamps, 23 to 26 April 2026” (eighth season, return after two years, 35 entries in six classes, circuit length, entry list as PDF) — https://tourenwagen-legenden.de/2026/04/07/summer-trophy-spa-francorchamps-23-bis-26-april-2026-start-in-die-achte-spielzeit-der-tourenwagen-legenden-auf-dem-7004-kilometer-langen-ardennenkurs/
[2] TOURENWAGEN LEGENDEN, “How the first qualifying went — legends of endurance racing dominate proceedings” (29 drivers, Duller with four vehicles, Weege 2:31.751, class leaders Freitas and Batenburg) — https://tourenwagen-legenden.de/2026/04/26/so-lief-das-erste-qualifying-legenden-der-langstrecke-bestimmen-das-geschehen/
[3] TOURENWAGEN LEGENDEN, “How the first race went — a rollercoaster ride through the Ardennes” (Eau Rouge collision with Tim Kuijl, time penalties, Weege overall winner, class wins for Freitas and Batenburg, 635 CSi ex Harald Grohs) — https://tourenwagen-legenden.de/2026/04/26/spa-summer-classic-24-april-2026-tourenwagen-legenden-erstes-von-fuenf-rennwochenenden-so-lief-das-erste-rennen-eine-achterbahnfahrt-durch-die-ardennen/
[4] TOURENWAGEN LEGENDEN, “How the second race went — pole-sitter Thomas Ardelt takes first season win, Markus Weege first title contender” (“Duller Twins”, Kuzdas and Mattersdorfer, class wins for Pott and Janssen) — https://tourenwagen-legenden.de/2026/04/27/spa-summer-classic-26-april-2026-tourenwagen-legenden-erstes-von-fuenf-rennwochenenden-so-lief-das-zweite-rennen-pole-sitter-thomas-ardelt-zum-ersten-saisonsieg-markus-weege-erste/
[5] TOURENWAGEN LEGENDEN, “How the second 25-minute qualifying went: 2:29.249 minutes — Thomas Ardelt’s MUSIC MONSTER strikes” — https://tourenwagen-legenden.de/2026/04/27/so-lief-das-zweite-qualifying-ueber-25-minuten-229-249-minuten-thomas-ardelts-music-monster-schlaegt-zu/
[6] TOURENWAGEN LEGENDEN, 2026 race calendar and class overview — https://tourenwagen-legenden.de/
[7] netzwerkeins / Carsten Krome, preview of the Summer Classic 2026 (entry status, context on the series) — https://www.netzwerkeins.com/2026/04/02/summer-trophy-spa-francorchamps/
[8] netzwerkeins / Carsten Krome, 2026 class structure, parts 3 and 4 (Group A from 1982, new class up to 3,300 cc) — https://www.netzwerkeins.com/2025/11/12/tourenwagen-legenden-2026-klasse-4-hier-spielt-die-musik/
[9] TOURENWAGEN LEGENDEN, announcement on the Salzburgring weekend (championship standings ahead of the fourth race weekend) and on the PURE GROUP A pilot project — https://tourenwagen-legenden.de/termine-2026/
[10] netzwerkeins / Carsten Krome, Zandvoort weekend review with Harald Grohs (context on the driver) — https://www.netzwerkeins.com/2026/06/29/harald-grohs-als-sieger-der-klasse-3-zum-koenig-der-best-ager-gekroent/
Bildnachweise
- Own photograph · MOTORSPORT24