Elite Motorsport’s 2026 GB4 Teams’ Championship began with 134 points on the board and two victories from the opening weekend. Less than three weeks later, that entire score had disappeared.
A breach of the championship’s private-testing regulations resulted in the reigning champion losing every Teams’ Championship point it had earned at Silverstone. The sanction effectively forced Elite to begin its title defence from zero while its rivals already held advantages exceeding 100 points.
What followed became one of the defining stories of the 2026 season. Fred Green continued producing victories and poles, Matan Achituv and Emmilio Valentino Del Grosso provided increasingly valuable supporting scores, and Yani Stevenheydens made an immediate impact when he joined the team at Donington Park.
Elite did not reach the top of the standings until the penultimate round. Once it did, however, the team never relinquished control. It eventually finished the year on 688 points, 86 clear of Hillspeed, turning an opening-round disqualification into a second consecutive Teams’ Championship.
Silverstone: A dominant start disappears
On track, Elite could hardly have begun its title defence much better. Green immediately established himself as the championship’s early benchmark, winning both conventional-grid races on his single-seater debut.
Del Grosso also contributed strongly, including an Elite one-two behind Green in the opening race at Silverstone, while Achituv added further points. The trio initially left Round 1 with 134 points, 22 clear of Douglas Motorsport.
However, the championship subsequently investigated Elite for running during the restricted testing period before Silverstone. Officials found the team had breached Appendix 6 of the Sporting and Technical Regulations.
Elite was disqualified from the Silverstone event for Teams’ Championship purposes, fined £1,200 and forfeited all 134 points. A championship disqualification was also imposed but suspended for the remainder of the calendar year.
The drivers retained their individual results, but the Teams’ standings changed completely. Douglas inherited the championship lead on 112 points while Elite dropped to zero.
Oulton Park: The recovery begins with 119 points
Elite therefore arrived at Oulton Park effectively one round behind every other team.
Green immediately ensured the recovery began strongly. He won Race 1 after resisting sustained pressure from Alex O’Grady, extending his perfect run in the opening conventional-grid races to three victories.
Elite continued scoring throughout the weekend through Green, Achituv and Del Grosso. The team earned 52 points in Race 1, 46 in Race 2 and another 21 in the reverse-grid finale, giving it 119 from the event.
That haul would have strengthened a normal championship campaign considerably. In Elite’s circumstances, it simply moved the team into sixth.
The standings after Oulton Park placed Hillspeed at the top on 194 points, with Douglas Motorsport following on 170. Elite already trailed the leader by 75 despite having one of the championship’s most successful drivers.
Yet Oulton showed that the penalty had not changed the team’s competitiveness. Elite had immediately become the highest-scoring squad of Round 2, beginning the long process of recovering the points lost at Silverstone.
Donington Park: Progress slows but the deficit remains manageable
The first Donington Park round proved more difficult.
Track-limits penalties transformed the grids after Qualifying and left several leading drivers starting from the midfield, including Green. That reduced Elite’s opportunities to score at the level required to make a major championship gain.
Green recovered positions across the weekend, including a charge to sixth in the reverse-grid finale, while Achituv and Del Grosso continued contributing points. Elite nevertheless added only 76 across the three races, reaching 195.
The Teams’ Championship after Round 3 still showed Elite sixth. Hillspeed had increased its total to 282, leaving the defending champion 87 points behind.
That became Elite’s largest deficit after the opening-round sanction. Five teams remained ahead, while Douglas Motorsport, Pace Performance, Fortec Motorsports and KMR Sport all occupied positions between Elite and the championship leader.
However, the standings remained compressed enough that no rival had taken complete control. Elite still had four rounds and 12 races available to recover, while Green’s position near the front of the Drivers’ standings continued giving the team a reliable source of major points.
Silverstone: Elite halves the championship deficit
The return to Silverstone provided the first major step forward.
Green’s weekend began badly when contact with Thomas Ingram Hill removed both from contention in Race 1, but Elite still found ways to accumulate points across all three races. Achituv and Del Grosso became particularly important when Green encountered trouble, preventing one driver’s difficult result from destroying the team’s weekend.
Elite scored 30 points in Race 10, 42 in Race 11 and 35 in Race 12, adding 107 across the round. Its championship total consequently climbed from 195 to 302.
Hillspeed remained first on 345, but Elite had reduced an 87-point deficit to only 43.
The recovery also demonstrated why the Teams’ Championship differed from Green’s individual title campaign. Green remained Elite’s largest scorer, but the team could not rely solely on his results. Every position gained by Achituv or Del Grosso contributed to closing a deficit created before they had even reached Oulton Park.
By the end of the second Silverstone weekend, Elite had climbed to fifth. For the first time since the penalty, the Teams’ Championship lead had moved within the value of a particularly strong round.
Snetterton: A difficult weekend still brings Elite closer
Snetterton could easily have halted Elite’s recovery.
Green entered the weekend firmly involved in the Drivers’ Championship fight but suffered a mechanical problem while leading Race 1. O’Grady inherited victory, while Green’s non-score also cost Elite a potentially significant Teams’ Championship haul.
Green responded with second in Race 2, but his reverse-grid race ended early after opening-lap trouble. Elite therefore needed Achituv and Del Grosso to prevent the weekend becoming as damaging in the Teams’ standings as it proved for Green individually.
The team still added 97 points across the three races and reached 399.
Meanwhile, the lead changed hands again. Pace Performance moved onto 434 points after another strong weekend from Josh McLean, Torrin Byrne and John O’Donnell.
Elite remained fifth, but the gap had fallen to only 35 points. The team had therefore recovered more than half of the 87-point deficit it faced after Donington despite Green enduring one of his most difficult rounds.
With six races remaining, all five leading teams remained close enough for the championship order to change quickly.
Donington Park: Stevenheydens strengthens Elite’s line-up
Elite arrived at the second Donington Park round still fifth, but its line-up gained another significant asset.
Stevenheydens joined Green and Achituv and immediately demonstrated his pace by claiming both pole positions on his GB4 debut. His arrival gave Elite another driver capable of scoring at the very front at precisely the stage of the season when the Teams’ Championship remained finely balanced.
Green took advantage when Stevenheydens made a slow start in Race 1. The British driver moved into the lead and secured his fourth victory of the season, while Stevenheydens recovered to third.
Race 2 delivered an even larger result for Elite. Stevenheydens converted his second pole into victory and Green finished directly behind him, giving the team a one-two.
Even the reverse-grid finale brought useful points, with Stevenheydens recovering to sixth. Across the weekend, Elite scored 148 points.
That haul completely transformed the championship.
From fifth to first in one weekend
Elite entered Donington on 399 points and 35 behind Pace Performance. It left on 547 and finally occupied the position it had seemingly earned five months earlier at the opening Silverstone round.
Pace Performance reached 530, meaning Elite suddenly held a 17-point advantage. Hillspeed followed on 502, with Douglas Motorsport on 501 and Fortec Motorsports on 498.
Only 49 points covered the leading five teams before the Brands Hatch finale, leaving almost every major position unresolved.
For Elite, however, simply reaching first represented a major achievement. The team had spent every round since Silverstone rebuilding from its disqualification and had remained sixth as late as Donington in June. It then sat fifth after both Silverstone and Snetterton before one exceptional weekend carried it past all four teams ahead.
Green and Stevenheydens provided the headline results, but Elite’s recovery had required contributions from every driver used throughout the season.
The team entered Brands Hatch no longer needing to chase. For the first time since the amended Silverstone standings, every rival had to overcome Elite instead.
Brands Hatch: Green provides the perfect start
Elite’s championship advantage remained small enough that another difficult weekend could still undo months of recovery.
Green ensured that did not happen.
Already established as the season’s strongest Qualifying driver, he claimed both pole positions on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit, taking his season total to seven. Those results also secured the David Poole Warren Pole Position Cup for Elite.
Green then converted Race 1 pole into victory, while Del Grosso produced an important fifth-place finish. Achituv added further points in 11th.
Race 2 followed an even stronger pattern at the front. Green controlled proceedings to complete his second victory of the weekend and sixth of the year.
Although O’Grady’s second place simultaneously secured the Drivers’ Championship, Green’s two wins had a different significance for Elite. They ensured the Teams’ title remained firmly under the squad’s control heading into the final reverse-grid contest.
Elite had already turned its 17-point pre-event advantage into a far more comfortable position.
Achituv closes the season with crucial podium
Green’s weekend provided the majority of Elite’s headline success, but Achituv delivered the team’s final major result of the season.
Starting near the front of the reverse-grid Race 3, the Israeli spent the contest pressuring Michael Koh for victory. Light rain added another complication, but Achituv remained within striking distance throughout and crossed the line only 0.634s behind the Arden Motorsport driver.
His second place brought another sizeable Teams’ Championship score at exactly the point when Green started further back under the reverse-grid format.
Elite accumulated 141 points across Brands Hatch, its second-largest round haul of the season after Donington. The final official Teams’ standings placed the squad on 688 points.
Hillspeed climbed to second on 602, Fortec Motorsports finished third on 598 and Pace Performance dropped to fourth on 595.
The 17-point advantage Elite carried into Brands Hatch had therefore grown to 86 by the final chequered flag.
Green provides the championship’s largest contribution
Green inevitably formed the centre of Elite’s title defence.
His six victories and seven poles made him one of the highest-scoring drivers in the championship, while his runner-up finish in the Drivers’ standings supplied a constant stream of Teams’ points.
He won the first two races of the season, added another victory at Oulton Park and returned to the top step during the second Donington round. His Brands Hatch double then ensured Elite ended its campaign with the strongest possible conventional-grid results.
Green also secured the George Russell Pole Position Cup with seven poles, five more than any rival. That success automatically gave Elite the David Poole Warren Pole Position Cup and its associated £1,000 prize.
Yet Green’s difficult weekends also demonstrated why Elite required depth beyond one driver. Whenever penalties, contact or mechanical problems affected its leading scorer, Achituv, Del Grosso and later Stevenheydens became essential to keeping the Teams’ title recovery on course.
Achituv and Del Grosso provide vital supporting scores
Achituv’s final championship position of 10th does not fully capture his importance to Elite’s Teams’ campaign.
Unlike Green, his season was not built around victories or regular poles. Instead, Achituv repeatedly accumulated the secondary scores that matter in a Teams’ Championship, particularly when Green encountered trouble. His strongest result then arrived at the perfect moment with second place in the Brands Hatch finale.
Del Grosso played a similar role during much of the campaign. He began the year by completing an Elite one-two behind Green at Silverstone before those Teams’ points were later removed, but continued contributing after the championship reset.
His fifth place in Brands Hatch Race 1 became another particularly useful result during the title-deciding weekend.
Together, those performances gave Elite something several rivals struggled to maintain across every event: multiple cars capable of scoring meaningful points even when the team’s leading driver encountered problems.
That depth prevented the Silverstone penalty from becoming impossible to overcome.
Stevenheydens makes an immediate late-season impact
Few individual appearances affected the Teams’ Championship as dramatically as Stevenheydens’ Donington debut.
The Belgian arrived with Elite for the penultimate round and immediately took two poles. Although Green beat him after a slow Race 1 start, Stevenheydens still finished third before responding with victory in Race 2.
His sixth place in the reverse-grid finale completed a weekend in which he contributed heavily to Elite’s 148-point haul.
The timing proved decisive. Elite had spent four consecutive rounds outside the Teams’ Championship top four and entered Donington fifth. Stevenheydens’ arrival gave the squad another frontrunning car just as it needed to make its largest championship move.
By Sunday evening, Elite had jumped from fifth to first.
His contribution also reinforced the wider strength of the operation. Elite could introduce a new driver late in the season and immediately provide machinery capable of taking poles and winning races.
From zero to 688 points
Elite’s championship progression illustrates the scale of the recovery more clearly than the final margin.
The team left the opening Silverstone weekend having initially scored 134 points, only for the testing breach to erase all of them. It then reached 119 at Oulton Park, 195 after Donington and 302 following the second Silverstone round.
Snetterton moved the total to 399, leaving Elite fifth but only 35 points from first. The second Donington visit produced the decisive leap to 547 and finally put the team 17 points ahead.
Brands Hatch then completed the journey with another 141 points.
Elite finished on 688, ahead of Hillspeed on 602, Fortec Motorsports on 598 and Pace Performance on 595.
The eventual 86-point margin therefore hides how long the defending champion spent chasing. Elite did not lead the amended standings after any of the first five rounds and only reached first with three races remaining.
A second consecutive title earned the difficult way
Elite entered 2026 as the reigning champion after winning both the Drivers’ and Teams’ titles in 2025. Defending the Teams’ crown quickly became considerably more difficult than expected.
The Silverstone sanction meant the team could not simply build on Green’s exceptional opening weekend. Every subsequent round became part of a recovery, while rivals including Hillspeed, Pace Performance, Douglas Motorsport and Fortec all spent periods ahead.
What ultimately separated Elite was its ability to continue scoring with multiple drivers while waiting for the championship to come back within reach.
Green supplied the victories and poles. Achituv and Del Grosso kept adding supporting points. Stevenheydens arrived late and immediately provided a race win, two poles and the additional scores required to complete the biggest single-weekend swing of the season.
By Brands Hatch, the recovery was no longer theoretical. Elite had finally become the team everyone else needed to catch, and Green’s double victory combined with Achituv’s podium ensured nobody could.
The final standings show an 86-point championship victory. The more significant number, however, may be zero — the total Elite was forced to restart from after Round 1 before turning the remaining six weekends into a second consecutive GB4 Teams’ Championship.
