Luis Beilicke enjoyed a dream start to his car-racing career as he took a pair of lights-to-flag victories in the opening round of the 2026 Ginetta GT Academy at Silverstone this past weekend (25-26 April).
Making his debut after winning the PT Autosport’s Aspiring Driver Shootout in America, Beilicke put in a supreme performance to lead the rookies throughout. In GTA meanwhile, Joe Ostholthoff and Tom Walker also marked their opening Ginetta event with class victories.
Qualifying
The GT Academy grid for 2026 features a number of new faces to the paddock and impressively, the top eight in qualifying were all making their Ginetta debuts. Leading the way was Beilicke (Want2Race), with a phenomenal performance seeing him lap eight tenths of a second quicker than anyone else.
Ian Beaumont (SVG Motorsport) made it a rookie one-two at the top of the timesheets, as Joe Ostholthoff (Want2Race) finished as the leading GTA class contender in third overall. Fellow GTA runners Tom Walker (E3 Sport) and Connor Blackburn (Performance One) completed the top five.
Race One
Beilicke maintained his lead off the rolling start to kick off the first race of the season, while an early change behind saw Ostholthoff pass Beaumont at Club for second. That left the latter under threat from Walker and Blackburn, with the trio running three abreast into Abbey.
Unfortunately contact resulted in a spin into the gravel for Blackburn and the emergence of the safety car. When the action restarted, Beilicke quickly broke clear of his pursuers and pulled away to the outright victory by almost five seconds.
Ostholthoff had Walker in his mirrors for the remainder of the race, but the American ace kept him at a safe distance en-route to second overall and the GTA class honours. Walker finished second in class, while Beaumont fought back from the earlier incident to finish second in the rookies.
Will Fallon (Privateer) picked up a couple of places during the race en-route to the final spot on the GTA podium. Fellow GTA entrants and Want2Race team-mates Maxwell Waithman and Allan Wright were next up, while Lucas Theo (SVG Motorsport) marked his debut with a rookie podium.
Race Two
Beilicke followed up his race one heroics with an even better performance to complete his debut weekend. The German racer led every lap of race two on Sunday, taking the chequered flag more than 11 seconds clear of his closest competitor, GTA class winner Walker.
While the top two had relatively lonely races, it was all action behind with an exciting three car battle between Fallon, Waithman and Blackburn. After some close racing between them Fallon took the finish line first, but was handed a five-second track limits time penalty.
Waithman therefore gained a position to finish second in GTA, with Fallon holding on to the final position on the class podium ahead of Blackburn. Wright completed the top five in the GTA category, with Ben Wiseman (Want2Race) and Theo battling it out for the rookie class podium behind.
Wiseman just edged out his rival for his maiden Ginetta podium in second. Ash Young (Performance One) was fourth in class, while Beaumont impressively fought back from the rear of the field after a lap one spin to finish up fifth of the rookie contenders.
2024 GTA champion Julian Wantling completed the overall top ten ahead of his long-time E3 Sport team-mate Robin Grimwood. Want2Race duo Ben Cooke and Faye Goff were next up, while Ostholthoff rounded out the finishers after having to do an early pitstop.
In addition to his double rookie win, Beilicke was also successful twice in the new Silver Class, for drivers aged 22 and under. In the Chairmans Cup meanwhile, a class for drivers aged 45 and over, Wright picked up both victories.
Full race results can be found at www.tsl-timing.com/event/261705
Both races can be watched back now at www.youtube.com/gtworld
