🇧🇪 Jef Machiels

Jef Machiels is a professional endurance racing driver rated at 4,016, which places him in the professional band of drivers competing at a level below established professionals but ahead of entry-level. He races for AF Corse in GT World Challenge Europe, a single-class endurance championship run across Europe with grids mixing amateurs, semi-professionals and graded professionals. He drives Ferrari machinery in that series. Machiels holds an FIA Silver grade, which ranks him among developing drivers in endurance racing rather than in the established professional tier.[1]

His indexed record spans five seasons from 2022 to 2026 across three series. He began in Italian F4 as a solo driver in 2022, completing four starts in that single-seater championship. Since 2024, he has raced predominantly in GT World Challenge Europe, where he has started 43 times for AF Corse. He has also competed in the 24H Series, a multiclass international endurance championship, taking a win and a podium across six starts; that victory in multiclass racing against both amateur and professional fields represents his sole win to date.[2]

Machiels regularly encounters established professionals on the grid. He typically finishes behind Patric Niederhauser, a Platinum-graded driver with over a decade of GT racing, and Gilles Magnus, a Gold-graded professional who has raced in the FIA World Touring Car Cup and DTM. He has nevertheless beaten drivers of considerable standing; he finished ahead of Maro Engel, the 2024 GT World Challenge Europe champion and a Platinum-graded driver with 85 starts in that series, and ahead of Charles Weerts, who has won GT World Challenge Europe four times and holds 99 starts in it. These results against champions and established professionals remain occasional rather than consistent, reflecting his position as a developing driver working within the framework of one of European endurance racing's major teams.