“It’s time to finally put a Lamborghini on the top step of the podium here,” Jordan Pepper told DSC on Thursday afternoon. Come Sunday, he and Grasser Racing Team co-drivers Luca Engstler and Mirko Bortolotti in the #63 car did just that, finally clinching the Italian marque’s debut victory at the Belgian classic as the long-serving Huracan GT3 is on the cusp of replacement by a new model.
“I’m normally a man of many words, but I’m speechless. Proud of this group, proud of Mirko. Grasser Racing as a team bleed this day and night, they live this 24/7. I couldn’t be prouder of them,” Pepper said at the flag.
It’s the debut Spa 24 Hours win for the team and all three drivers, as well as a big improvement on Lamborghini’s previous best Spa finish of fifth and an unprecedented sixth different manufacturer to triumph in six years at the race. It’s also a nice ‘full circle’ moment for Bortolotti, who drove the Huracan on its first appearance at this race a decade ago in 2015, not to mention a fifth overall win for the 5.0-litre Audi V10 engine at the event.
All three of Lamborghini’s major 24-hour wins, this race and its Daytona triumphs in 2018 and 2019, have now come from Grasser-run cars with Bortolotti at the wheel.
After a relatively quiet and fully dry race that was ‘reset’ numerous times by full-course yellows followed by safety cars on Saturday and through the night, the battle for the win finally coalesced on Sunday morning, with both the winning Lamborghini and the #96 Rutronik Racing Porsche (above) of Sven Mueller, Patric Niederhauser and Alessio Picariello benefitting from well-timed FCYs that covered one of their planned pitstops.
Rutronik initially held the advantage on Sunday morning, but none of its three drivers could match the pace that Bortolotti and Pepper in particular could generate at the wheel of the Grasser Huracan. Several times the Italian car got within touching distance of the Porsche, only for the Rutronik entry to pit for a scheduled driver change. In the end, Mueller, Niederhauser and Picariello were extremely lucky to even finish second as they did; at one point Mueller suffered a puncture coming through Blanchimont on his in-lap, which let Bortolotti take the lead on-track just before the Porsche pitted.
The Lamborghini survived a late-race heart-in-mouth moment when there was momentary delay in the #63 firing up at its final pitstop, which made the final gap at the flag less than it needed to be. But good tyre management from Bortolotti meant he was always able to manage the gap, which stood at 8.703 seconds at the flag.
The rounds of FCY roulette also saw both the #98 (above) and #998 ROWE Racing BMWs come to the fore on occasion, but their challenge faded as the Porsche vs Lamborghini battle intensified. With one eye possibly on the GT World Challenge Europe points table, Raffaele Marciello brought the #98 home third to score a podium finish on the road for himself and co-drivers Augusto Farfus and Jesse Krohn. But this would become fifth in the final results when a 30-second penalty was added post-race for track-limits infringements.
Ferrari looked competitive throughout but at no point truly dominated, with eventual fourth-place finishers Alessandro Pier Guidi, Alessio Rovera and Vincent Abril in the #51 AF Corse machine (above) being promoted to a consolation podium finish by the Marciello penalty.
They were left pondering what could have been after tumbling down to around 50th in the early stages due to an extra pit stop for a brake issue. Anchored by typically quick and combative stints right until the end from Pier Guidi, they recovered to be battling the ROWE cars for third before long – in the process overhauling the sister #50 car’s overall less experienced line-up of Arthur Leclerc, Eliseo Donno and Antonio Fuoco, which finished fourth.
The #998 ROWE entry of Philip Eng, Max Hesse and Dan Harper was on course for sixth after Harper earlier had a multi-corner battle with Pier Guidi, but heartbreakingly Eng had to retire the car in the closing minutes.
That promoted the polesitting #59 Garage 59 McLaren (above) to sixth – a very reliable run to better the marque’s previous best finish of seventh at Spa, and a very strong result in particular for 24-hour racing debutant Joseph Loake, sharing with Marvin Kirchhofer and Benjamin Goethe.
Seventh and eighth place respectively went to two WRT BMWs – the #32 of Weerts/van der Linde/de Weerts and the #31 of Vanthoor/van der Linde/Wittman – after an uncharacteristically quiet home race for the powerhouse Belgian outfit.
As was the case in Pro Cup, the battle for the Gold Cup win (and ninth overall) came down to a back-and-forth scrap between two very strong entries from Sunday morning onwards, with Dean MacDonald in the #58 Garage 59 McLaren putting Chris Lulham in the #33 Verstappen.com Aston Martin (above) under increasing pressure as temperatures climbed on Sunday morning. They remained inseparable through the next pitstop cycle and a change of drivers to Frederik Schandorff and Thierry Vermeulen respectively.
As the duo negotiated traffic in the subsequent laps, Schandorff managed to both get ahead of Vermeulen and eke out a gap to put one hand on the trophy with less than five hours to run. But there was disaster in the final 10 minutes when MacDonald had a tyre blow through Blanchimont, passing the win to the Aston trio of Vermeulen, Lulham and former Ginetta GT4 Supercup champion Harry King.
The #48 Mann-Filter entry was the sole Mercedes representative in the top 10, after several of the marque’s representatives fell by the wayside with technical problems and/or damage from contact. And there was to be no repeat win for the 2024 victors, as the #7 Aston Martin retired with engine trouble.
Silver Cup honours went the way of the #35 Walkenhorst Aston Martin, while the Pro-Am category (contested only at the Spa 24 Hours) was won by #29 AV Racing by Car Collection Porsche. In the Bronze Cup, the victor was the #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari.
Images: SRO/JEP, Marcel Wulf and Frozenspeed
