Nobody Had Ever Won Three in a Row. Then Came Nascar Zolder.

Vittorio Ghirelli finished eleventh on Sunday and made history anyway. Nobody had ever won three European NASCAR titles in a row. At Circuit Zolder, the Italian did.

He wasn't the only one celebrating. Over the American Festival NASCAR Finals weekend of 17 and 18 October, Zolder crowned champions in both EuroNASCAR divisions and the Porsche Carrera Cup Benelux. It also closed the Belcar Endurance Championship with a winner that had waited all year.

Heavy rain on Saturday night left the track cold and damp. The racing ran hot regardless. Here is how the 2026 season ended, series by series.

EuroNASCAR V8GP: eleventh was enough

Paul Jouffreau won both V8GP finals, the first double of his career. Ghirelli took the title. Both stories matter.

Saturday started with Garrett Lowe on pole in the BS+Bremotion Camaro. Behind him, Giovanni Cartechini lost it in the first left-hander and took Jack Davidson out with him. At the safety car restart, Jouffreau grabbed the lead from Lowe and never gave it back.

Sebastiaan Bleekemolen took his first podium of the season in third. Gianmarco Ercoli was fourth, ahead of Marc Goossens, the best Belgian in fifth. Title rivals Nelson Piquet Jr. and Ghirelli followed close behind in sixth and seventh. Jouffreau dedicated the win to every woman fighting breast cancer, his mother among them.

Sunday was a test of nerve. Ghirelli started from the front row and took it easy at the start, because any top-11 finish made him champion. Just before half distance, Ercoli pushed him onto the grass under braking for the Jacky Ickx chicane. Ghirelli kept the PK Carsport Chevrolet out of the wall, and Ercoli collected a five-second penalty.

Up front, Jouffreau was untouchable. Lowe, chasing his first win and third in the standings, parked his Camaro at half distance. Vinnie Miskelis inherited second. Bleekemolen held third until a last-lap clash with Piquet Jr., who took the final podium spot. Goossens again finished as best Belgian, in sixth.

Ghirelli crossed the line eleventh. It was enough: 493 points, against 480 for both Piquet Jr. and Jouffreau. Jouffreau's four wins to Piquet's two make the Frenchman vice-champion, and he takes the Junior title as well.

EuroNASCAR OPEN: fifth place, first crown

Thomas Toffel is the 2026 OPEN champion. The Swiss driver led the standings from the season opener in Valencia all the way to the last lap at Zolder.

Saturday's final ran in the rain, and Claudio Cappelli won it. Toffel finished second while his closest rival, Raphaël Lessard, fought technical problems. That one afternoon stretched Toffel's lead from 12 points to 26.

On Sunday morning the track was cold and still wet from the night. Lessard started first and led every lap to win the final OPEN race of the year. Behind him, Thomas Dombrowski attacked Cappelli hard and was singled out as the race's bad guy afterwards. Toffel stayed out of trouble, brought his No. 34 Camaro home fifth and took the title by 32 points over Dombrowski, with Lessard two points further back.

Three wins and five more podiums with THT by Race Art Technology. And after the flag, mostly relief: Toffel admitted he needed an hour just to let the pressure drain away. The title earns him a seat at the NASCAR Awards in the United States. In the Master Trophy, Sandro Tavartkiladze sealed the 2026 crown.

Porsche Carrera Cup Benelux: 18 years old, and faster than anyone before him

Milan Marczak didn't need the final race. The 18-year-old Pole from Ajith-RedAnt Racing clinched the title on Saturday, then won on Sunday too.

He set the tone in qualifying with a 1:29.307, a new Zolder lap record for the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, and took pole for both races. On Saturday he led from lights to flag. The title was his with a race to spare.

Sunday's race, in a Porsche dressed with gold accents for the occasion, opened with a short duel with Paul Meijer (Quanloop EST1 Racing). Then Meijer clipped the tyre stack at the Boutsen chicane, and a five-second penalty dropped him to fifth. Marczak won by six seconds from vice-champion Jaap van Lagen (Team RaceArt), with Hjelte Hoffner (MDM Motorsport) third.

The numbers say what kind of season this was. Six wins from twelve races, half of all the victories on offer. Marczak only started racing cars in 2025, and this is already his third title, after last year's Rookie crown and the 2026 Porsche Sprint Challenge Southern Europe. His team manager Marc Goossens praised him for staying flawless at exactly the point of the season where that is hardest.

The Rookie title flipped in the final metres. David Dziwok (GP Elite) arrived as leader but tangled with Mees Muller and ended in the gravel just before the flag. Mees's brother and teammate Joep Muller (Muller Racing by JW) won the class and, with it, the title. In Pro-Am, Jani Käkelä stayed unbeatable.

Belcar Endurance: ART Racing's day, Belgium Racing's year

Belgium Racing came to Zolder as champions. The #99 Porsche 992 GT3 Cup of Dylan Derdaele, Nicolas Saelens and Paul Meijer had wrapped up the title with third place at the 24 Hours of Zolder. Meijer still put it on pole on Sunday morning, Belgium Racing's final pole of 2026, on the same day he raced in the Carrera Cup.

The three-hour finale started at 14:50 and closed the weekend. Christoff Corten got the black-and-red ART Racing Porsche away well, and the #2 ran wheel to wheel with Belgium Racing for a long time. Then it pulled a gap. Benjamin Paque controlled the closing stint and brought it home.

It was ART Racing's first win of the season, after a year of near misses that included second place at the 24 Hours. Corten called it a win the whole team had earned. For Lorenzo Donniacuo it was a first Belcar victory, one week after he won the Fun Cup on the same circuit. The result also makes ART Racing vice-champion overall, in GT Cup and in the Porsche Endurance Trophy Benelux.

Belgium Racing filled the rest of the podium: the #99 in second, the #98 of Michael Cool, Brent Verheyen and Kaï Rillaerts in third. MM Racing and the #747, Belgium Racing's third car, completed the top five.

In GT Sport, the SRT Mercedes-AMG GT4 of Jarne De Meulder and Alec Verbergt won again. Four class wins in five races gave SRT the GT Sport title and third place in the overall championship, behind two faster Porsches.

BMW swept all three touring car classes:

• Super Sport: a first win of the year for One Life Projects (Xilian Bonne and Hans Weijs, BMW M240i Dayvtec). Father and son Koen and Nono Wauters are the class champions.
• Club Sport: One Life Projects / 4OUR Racing won in a BMW 125i Dayvtec. ML Autosport had already sealed the title.
• Club Challenge: Davy and Vincent Convents won from pole in their BMW 325i, a fine birthday present for Vincent. 4OUR Racing by Roos Motorsport were already champions.

Second in Club Challenge went to the Team Longin by MSTC Mazda MX-5 of Bert Longin, Junior Planckaert and Robbe Janssens, and Janssens' weekend deserves its own paragraph. On Saturday he won twice at Magny-Cours and clinched a third straight title in the production class of the European GT Lite Challenge. He then drove through the night to Limburg, qualified second and stood on a Belcar podium on Sunday afternoon.

Save the date

The engines are cold, but not for long. The 2027 NASCAR Euro Series opens on 17 and 18 April in Valencia and ends, once again, at Circuit Zolder on 16 and 17 October 2027. The Porsche Carrera Cup Benelux starts its 2027 season in April at Portimão, and Circuit Zolder says the first Belcar plans for 2027 will be announced soon.

One weekend gave us a hat-trick nobody had managed before, a brand-new lap record and a team that finally broke through. If you watched it on a screen, you only got half of it. Put 16 and 17 October 2027 in your calendar now, and hear the next one from the fence.