Straight out of Atlanta, Erik Evans placed sixth in his third full season of racing in the GT4 European Series.
Driving the No. 61 Academy Motorsports Ford Mustang S650 GT4, Evans will be back to the GT4 European Series in 2026 and was recently in Southern California where he was checking in with sponsors and getting his program in order before heading back overseas to Europe and the start of the racing season.
“I’m out here at Monster Energy headquarters and getting a tour of the place and meeting all the great people behind Monster Energy,” said the 22-year-old from Corona, California. “I’m having a blast with it.
“I’m doing the offseason back home in Atlanta,” furthered Evans. “It’s a lot of preparation for the next season. I’m hitting the gym with my trainer. I’ve been getting with my mental performance coach and planning out what the goals are. We’re getting ready for what steps we want to take and what improvements we want to make throughout the year.
“And the first week of the year we had the Ford Driver Development Program training camp. Ford has the Ford Performance Technical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s where they have all their simulators that every Ford driver has access to. We only use them for preparation. They got us on the GT3 and GT4 simulators. Just been constantly on the grind and doing things.”
Evans is now fast at getting prepared for the 2026 GT4 European Series opening round set for the Circuit Paul Ricard in France the weekend of April 10-12.
“We’re less than 35 days away from the first race of the year at Paul Ricard,” Evans said. “The next bit is just getting that last part of preparation in. I’m going back to the Ford simulator to do a full race weekend of preparation. Basically, we’ll run through the whole entire race weekend and explore setups and explore things maybe to try. We’ll do all that stuff and get ready for Paul Ricard.
“We’ll have an army of engineers and we’ll be working through race simulations and practice simulation and testing simulations before we even show up. From there we go straight into our first preseason test, which will be at Paul Ricard at the end of March. Then we have a week off and then it’s the first ace of the season.”
Evans and the team around him will focus in on optimizing the Academy Motorsports Ford Mustang S650 GT4.
“Nothing on the car has changed from last year’s car,” explained Evans. “Basically, the preseason test is just about the car being fully rebuilt over the winter. We’ll now need to do all the systems checks and go through and make sure everything is good on the cars. We’ll knock all the rust off of us drivers, as well, because I haven’t actually driven the car since the last race of the year in Barcelona. Yeah, we’ve got to go knock all the rust off and get back into the system of things and make sure all the systems in the cars are working great and just go through all that stuff. Hopefully, by the end of the test, we’re dialing in the specifics of whatever setup that we want to run.”
Evans has continued to gather experience and knowledge from famed European circuits such as Monza, Spa-Francorchamps, Misano, Zandvoort and Portimao.
“This will be fourth season in GT Racing and my third season in the European Championship,” explained Evans. “I’m really looking forward to it. We’ve spent the past two years really dialing everything in. last year we had a really good year. We had multiple wins, multiple podiums and we even led the championship at one point. I think that was a huge confidence boost.
“We ended up sixth overall. We had a big spell of bad luck through the middle part of the season there. Myself, Academy Motorsports and Ford, we all learned so much last year on what it takes to win the championship. We were able to win races and take that extra step. You’ve got to take the next step up from winning races to managing the championship.”
Evans believes he is going to win in 2026.
“Oh yeah we’re going there to win,” stated Evans. “I’ve always been a firm believer of why show up if you’re not going for the win. I’m not in racing for a participation trophy. I’m always going for that title. And we’ll go to Paul Ricard, Monza, Spa, Misano, Zandvoort and Portimao. All these tracks are super iconic. I’ve now been to them all.
“This will be my first year in the European Championship where I have raced at every single one of those tracks. I’m quite excited for that. I’ve been to all of them. I know the layouts. I know all the little tricks to get around them quickly. They’re also so cool just from the standpoint that they’re all super-iconic and they all have these awesome attributes to them that the rest of the tracks around the world don’t have.
“I’m super excited for that and I mean the calendar the European Championship puts together is always incredible. When I first started racing the European Championship it was a bit surreal just because growing up you watch Formula 1 and you watch the World Endurance Championship and you think, ‘Oh man, how cool would it be to race on one of those tracks?’ You get to do it and it’s a bit surreal. You definitely enjoy it, but you also have to remember that there is also a job to get done and that you’ve just go to treat it like it’s any other track or any other weekend. It’s all really cool, but you also have to stay level headed.”
And Erik Evans’ racing goals for the 2026 GT4 European Championship?
Evans has lofty goals.
“My long-term goal in Europe is obviously to make the step up to a full factory ride. It’s one of those things of making that step up into the full factory ride and competing in the biggest races in the world like the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring,” he said. “Big races like that. That’s the goal. Nd I’m excited that Ford is jumping into the Hypercar program. The top class of endurance racing. To be able to compete at those races overall and to win them overall is that next step. I want to take that next step up and compete in the Hypercar class with the Ford Hypercar that’s coming here in 2027.”
