It was a glorious display for the BMW M4 GT3 during the FANATEC GT World Challenge Europe opener at Monza, with the first Endurance Cup round seeing ROWE Racing doing a 1-2 finish with the No. 98 car of Philipp Eng, Marco Wittmann and Nick Yelloly and the No. 998 car of Dan Harper, Neil Verhagen and Max Hesse, while other teams like WRT also had strong races nad BMW Team Italia Ceccato Racing celebrated a class win at home.
The BMW M4 GT3 having the front row after a shortened Qualifying was the best start possible for the No. 46 WRT BMW and the No. 98 ROWE BMW, which swapped places on Lap 1. Another reason why starting in front was important was to avoid the traditional chaos at the first chicane, and with several cars smashed left, right and center, the Safety Car was the obvious call.
Two Safety Car periods consumed 25 minutes of racing time, but after that the action was already on as the No. 777 Al Manar Mercedes got second place as Maro Engel wasn’t really fond of losing time behind Valentino Rossi. Near the end of the first hour, the No. 46 had quite the moment as Rossi went for a bad line and stalled his M4, losing an awful lot of time until he got back in.
The first pit window threw the No.777 down the order, so BMW had control of the race at this point, with the No. 98 ROWE BMW still leading the No. 32 WRT BMW while the No. 998 ROWE BMW appeared by surprise when things got messy. Some serious contenders were eliminated in the second hour for the most diverse reasons - puncture and damaged diffuser for the No. 46 WRT BMW, rear damage for the No. 88 Akkodis ASP Mercedes, side damage for the No. 777 Al Manar Mercedes and so on.
Things were set for a status quo in the final hour but the No. 32 WRT BMW had to hurry to the pits with a left front puncture that sent it to sixth, which put the No. 63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini in the overall podium to try to combat the BMWs in front. Despite the best attempts from Mirko Bortolotti to close the gap, he was actually falling back in the radar of the No. 25 Saintéloc Audi, which meant the No. 98 ROWE BMW had clear way to capture the victory while the No. 998 ROWE BMW came home in second.
GTWC Europe - Monza results
The No. 21 ComToYou Audi had the best start possible in GT racing as the Belgian had a dominant Gold Cup win. The No. 911 Pure Porsche took advantage of the drop off from the No. 159 Garage 59 McLaren to win the Bronze Cup, followed by the No. 12 ComToYou Audi, which also saw no opposition to win the Silver Cup. The only class winner to not end in the overall top-20 was the Pro-Am Cup winner, as the No. 15 Ceccato BMW countered a strong No. 2 Barwell Lamborghini to get a late win.
The Endurance Cup will return to action only on 4 June at Paul Ricard with the traditional 1000 km race there, with the Sprint Cup opener at Brands Hatch and the Spa 24 Hours test days in between.
PHOTO: SRO/Patrick Hecq
Comments
Post a Comment
Do you have an opinion? Feel free to comment.