Maxime Martin, Alexander Sims and Philipp Eng have won the 2016 Spa 24 Hours in the #99 ROWE Racing BMW M6 GT3, coming through a torrential rain shower that jumbled the rest of the top five with less than 30 minutes to the flag.
Second went to Felix Rosenqvist, Tristan Vautier and Renger van der Zande in the #88 AKKA-ASP Mercedes (above), which passed the long-time third-place #86 Mercedes of Paffett, Goetz and Jaeger amidst a melee of aquaplaning cars at the Bus Stop when the heavy rain arrived.
Bentley’s Andy Soucek, Maxime Soulet and Wolfgang Reip were on course to finish second for much of the race, until the late downpour saw them pit under green to switch to wets, forcing them to do their on-track running under a FCY while the rest were changing to wets and losing less time. The #8 Continental GT3 would cross the line fourth in the end, a disappointing result for a car that had been in contention for the win earlier.
The winning ROWE BMW started from 11th on the grid and kept in touch during the disjointed early stages when there were two long safety cars for barrier repairs. It then came to the front and settled into a three-way race with the #8 Bentley and #6 Phoenix Audi for much of the hours of darkness and early morning.
A heavy but relatively brief rain shower on Sunday morning put teams in a difficult position deciding whether to switch to wets or not, and after doing so, Christopher Mies in the #6 found himself struggling to preserve the tyres on a drying track. At least one of the car’s rears eventually overheated and failed, damaging bodywork and starting a fire that put and end to Mies and co-driver Frank Stippler and Markus Winkelhock’s chances of a win.
Later on Sunday, the #99 stopped under a full-course yellow while the #8’s corresponding stop took place under green, handing the ROWE crew an advantage of around 40 seconds or so. Maxime Soulet in the #8 pushed hard to close down the gap, but a late-race puncture forced an additional stop that undid most of his work. The Bentley was also hampered by several drive-through penalties for driver stint time, pit-stop procedure and full-course yellow infringements, including one in the final hour.
The #86 HTP Mercedes of GT3 debutant Gary Paffett, former Spa 24 winner Max Goetz and AMG factory GT driver Thomas Jaeger had been on course to cross the line third, but it was given a drive-through penalty for an unsafe pit release in the frantic final stop to change to wets. That allowed Laurens Vanthoor, Rene Rast and Nico Muller in the #28 WRT Audi through into third in the final moments of the race.
This is the first 24-hour win for the BMW M6 GT3, in its debut year. It’s also BMW’s second Spa 24 win in a row after the Marc VDS Z4 triumphed here last year. For the drivers it’s a first 24-hour win for Martin and Sims and a first overall 24-hour win for Eng, to add to the class victory he scored at the Nurburgring in a Black Falcon Porsche 911 Cup car in 2015.
Maxime Martin and Jean-Michel Martin become the second father and son to have won Spa 24 Hours, after Toine and Mike Hezemans. Sims, meanwhile, is the first British winner here since Steve Soper triumphed in 1995 and therefore the first British driver to win the Spa 24 Hours in the GT era.
The result is particularly sweet for team boss Hans-Peter Naundorf and the entire ROWE Racing crew, who were cruelly robbed of a podium finish in the closing stages of last year’s Spa 24 when mechanical gremlins struck the Mercedes SLS they were running at that time.
Positions five to nine at the flag were filled by the penalised #86 HTP Mercedes, the #84 HTP Mercedes of full-season Blancpain Endurance crew Buhk, Baumann and Jafaar, the #26 Sainteloc Audi of Haase, Parisy and Guilvert, the #4 WRT Audi of Kaffer, Baguette and de Leener and the #75 ISR Audi of Salaquarda, Mortara and Stockinger.
A dominant Pro-Am Cup win went the way of the #76 IMSA Porsche crew of Raymond Narac, Patrick Pilet, Maxime Jousse and Thierry Comac, who finished just inside the overall top 10, seeing off the challenge of the #74 ISR Audi and #666 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini, which filled out the class podium.
In the Am Cup, the win went the way of the #888 Kessel Racing Racing Ferrari of Liam Talbot, Nicola Cadei, Vadim Gitlin and Marco Zanuttini.
Blancpain Endurance Cup points standings
The #58 McLaren crew’s failure to score at either the 12 or 24-hour marks closes up the Blancpain GT Endurance cup driver’s standings nicely ahead of the season finale at the Nurburgring. Bell, Ledogar and van Gisbergen still lead on 68 points, but Bentley’s Soulet, Soucek and Reip are now on 59 points, just nine behind. Sims, Martin and Eng’s win sees their thus-far disappointing Endurance Cup season turned around and they’re now third in the standings, on 58 points.
