With an impressive pursuit in the Endurance Cup race in Silverstone, Great Britain, ROWE RACING finished their “English week” in the Blancpain GT Series with a fantastic performance. After fourth place for the #98 BMW M6 GT3 a week earlier in Brands Hatch, this time it was the sister car with #99 that delivered a brilliant afternoon for the team from St. Ingbert in the “home of British motor racing”, and secured seventh place.
After first getting good times in the practice session and in pre-qualifying, the team’s two crews were unlucky in the crucial third qualifying session when they got caught up in traffic on the English Formula 1 track, and had to make do with starting positions 32 and 33. But the winning trio of the 2016 edition of the 24 Hours of Spa, made up of BMW DTM driver Maxime Martin from Belgium and the two BMW works drivers Philipp Eng of Austria and Alexander Sims of Great Britain, who ended up being available for his home race at short notice after all, refused to let it get them down, and once again showed incredible fighting spirit like they did last year when they finished fourth in Silverstone despite gearbox problems.
Starting driver Eng made up six places on the very first lap and continued to move up the grid. When he used a race neutralisation on the 23rd lap to make the first driver switch, he was in twelfth place – 20 places better than his starting position. Martin, who relieved Eng in the cockpit, was also wide awake right from the start. When the safety car that came onto the track after the neutralisation released the race on the 28th lap, the Belgian made up a further two positions on the first lap, and moved up from eleventh into sixth place with impressive speed. On the 51st lap, local hero Sims took the wheel and maintained sixth place until the penultimate lap, but was forced to let a faster rival overtake him. But finishing as the seventh-place team meant that the trio had made up an incredible 25 positions in the three hours of the race.
In contrast, BMW DTM driver Bruno Spengler from Canada, alongside the “Flying Finns” Markus Palttala and Jesse Krohn, was incredibly unlucky in his first race for ROWE RACING team boss Hans-Peter Naundorf, who was his first race engineer in the DTM in 2005. Starting driver Palttala reported a technical issue on the formation lap and had to return to the pit after the first lap. The trio lost two laps while the car was being repaired, and returned to the race in the 55th and last place. In the following three hours, Palttala, Spengler and Krohn didn’t put a foot wrong, but were unable to improve on 41st place in the strong field.
Philipp Eng, ROWE RACING #99 BMW M6 GT3: “It was a great race. It’s a shame that we had to start so far down the field, even though the qualifying position didn’t affect us as badly as we had feared. The car performed very well in the race, it was so much fun. Maxime and I were able to overtake a lot of cars in the first two stints, and always go on the attack. Now we need to analyse why we were so far behind in the crucial qualifying session, since traffic was not the only reason. We’re not really sure what the issue was yet. Our mechanics deserve a lot of praise. If the guys hadn’t changed the rear axle at such incredible speed, we would have been even further behind in the race.”
Hans-Peter Naundorf, team boss ROWE RACING: “It was an incredible performance from the whole team, a great race, which feels like a win. To move up from 32nd on the grid into sixth place for a while, and to finish seventh in such a strong field, that was of even higher quality than normal here in Silverstone, is fantastic. As well as the drivers, who once again did an outstanding job, this was down to the whole team. Even at the end of ten strenuous days in England, the guys did a magnificent job and prepared the cars superbly. I feel bad for the drivers of #98. When you look at the performance of #99, no doubt they would also have achieved a top 10 spot if they hadn’t had the technical problem, especially since all three of them put in a strong performance. It is important that Bruno Spengler contested his first race for us here and gained experience in the team since he will be in action for us in other races.”
The ROWE RACING team now was a race-free weekend ahead, before the first of two highlights of the season on 27th/28th May: the 45th edition of the Zurich 24h race at the Nürburgring. Eng, Martin and Sims will receive back-up in the #99 from the German Nordschleife specialist Marc Basseng. Sims will also be in action in the #98, alongside Palttala, Dutchman Nick Catsburg and fellow Brit Richard Westbrook.
