Dominik Baumann, Jazeman Jaafar and Max Buhk have gone one better than they managed in Monza, taking victory in Sunday’s three-hour Silverstone round of the Blancpain GT Endurance Cup in the #84 HTP Mercedes.
The Austrian-Malaysian-German crew crossed the line just under a second ahead of the #1 WRT Audi, which had qualified 11th, advanced to seventh in the hands of Frederic Vervisch in the first stint and then been vaulted into the battle for the lead courtesy of a fast pitstop by the well-drilled Belgian team. Brothers Dries and Laurens Vanthoor kept the pressure up for the remainder of the race, but in the end just didn’t have an answer for the Mercedes.
Third place went to the pole-sitting #16 Lamborghini of Mirko Bortolotti, Rolf Ineichen and Jeroen Bleekemolen, while the Pro-Am win went down to the wire, with the #56 Black Falcon Mercedes, #44 Oman Aston Martin and #74 ISR Audi crossing the line within tenths of each other in 17th, 18th and 19th overall after three hours of racing, Maro Engel in the #56 carving through from third to first at the very end to cap off a truly incredible race.
“The team were keeping me informed so I knew the gap was going down. I reckoned Jonny [Adam] would be the harder of the two, and after I got past him once, I was baulked by a slower car and he went back in front, so I had to do it again on the second-last lap.”
At the start, Bortolotti in the #16 Lamborghini held pole with ease, while Franck Perera in the #74 Audi and Maxime Martin in the #99 BMW also held their second and third-place grid slots respectively. There were multiple instances of contact further down the field, however, leaving the #8 Bentley, #100 Attempto Lamborghini, #78 Barwell Lamborghini, #23 RJN Nissan and #51 AF Corse Ferrari having to make early stops to attend to punctures or bodywork damage.
A battle for fifth between Guy Smith in the #7 Bentley and Clemens Schmid in the #85 HTP Mercedes saw the former car turned around by the Mercedes into Brooklands after several laps, dropping Smith down to the lower reaches of the top 20. Fourth-place starter Baumann in the #84 HTP Mercedes then went on the attack, getting past Martin’s BMW to move into third at the same place as Schmid’s assault on the Bentley.
After 15 minutes of racing, Bortolotti had Perera just tenths behind him at the head of the field, and the two were about five seconds up the road from the attacking Baumann. The latter’s team-mate Schmid continued carving through the field in the #85, putting the silver-grey Mercedes third and fourth after nine laps of racing.
Other drivers making progress in the early stages included Scuderia Praha Ferrari’s Matteo Malucelli (up to sixth ahead of Stephane Ortelli in the Jaguar, who started fifth but had now dropped to seventh). Vervisch in the #1 Audi meanwhile was up to eighth by this point.
“I felt we had the pace from the off,” said Vervisch afterwards. “It wasn’t that easy to overtake, but I tried to optimise any free space we got. I also had to save fuel, as that was part of our plan from the start.”
As Bortolotti and Perera kept each other busy at the front, the two HTP Mercedes of Baumann and Schmid inched closer in formation in third and fourth, getting to within 2.5 seconds by lap 13. The gap then stabilised for a bit, while further back, Vervisch finally managed to overhaul Ortelli for seventh with a robust move through the Complex and out onto the Wellington straight that earned him a warning flag for driving standards.
Heading into the first pit stops, Bortolotti led from Perera by about three seconds, with Baumann, Schmid, Martin and Malucelli (second in Pro-Am behind Perera) completing the top six. Vervisch was seventh, Ortelli eighth, Rob Bell in the #98 McLaren ninth and Jimenez 10th in the #3 WRT Audi, with Jens Klingmann in the other ROWE BMW in 11th. You had to go down to 17th to find the third car in the Pro-Am class: the #44 Oman Aston Martin, with Devon Modell aboard.
A fast, early pit stop from WRT Audi vaulted the #1 car from seventh to second, with Dries Vanthoor having taken over from Vervisch and Rolf Ineichen now piloting the #16 Lamborghini, which had retained the lead. The #84 Mercedes gained a place in the pits, with Jazeman Jafaar now at the wheel in third, ahead of Perera’s co-driver Henry Hassid in fourth in the ISR Audi. Luciano Bacheta took over the #85 Mercedes from Schmid, with the car slipping to fifth due to WRT’s speedy stop, while an early stop from Martin in the #99 ROWE BMW got Alexander Sims back out in sixth.
The #1 wasn’t the only WRT Audi to benefit from pit stop heroics: the #2 of Stuart Leonard emerged from the stops seventh, having been 15th on the grid, while a slow stop from the Emil Frey Jaguar saw Come Ledogar begin his stint at the wheel of the #58 McLaren in eighth.
It all kicked off up front as the half-way point approached: first, Vanthoor slipped past Ineichen for first through the Village complex, but on the next lap, Jafaar got a good exit out of Club and took advantage of several lapped cars to vault from third to the lead in the length of the F1 pit straight. The Malaysian driver swiftly drew out a lead of 4.5 seconds over Laurens Vanthoor’s younger brother, who himself soon had an advantage of nearly eight seconds over Ineichen’s Lamborghini.
Jafaar said afterwards: “The pace and balance of the car were good, so I just pushed hard and capitalised on every opportunity I got.”
Bacheta and Sims both got past Hassid’s ISR Audi during their stints, putting the #74 car at the head of a three-Audi train that also comprised Leonard in seventh in the #2 WRT R8 and works driver Christopher Haase having a steady run in eighth in the #26 Sainteloc car.
A brief full-course yellow was called about 40 minutes through the second hour, not for a specific incident but rather to allow clean-up of several pieces of debris from contact earlier in the race. Of the front-runners, only Leonard in the #2 Audi decided to take a gamble on pitting at this point.
After the race went green again, Hassid again lost places, to Haase and then Ledogar, dropping the Pro-Am-leading Audi to ninth overall. Places at the top of the field didn’t change during the second hour, however, setting up a Laurens Vanthoor vs Max Buhk battle for the win in the final stint.
The positions didn’t change during the stops, and Vanthoor ran about five seconds behind Buhk in the initial stages of the final hour. However, a safety car had to be deployed with 40 minutes go due to a stranded Am Cup Ferrari with broken suspension on the F1 pit straight, closing the leaders right up.
There were just 20 minutes to go when the safety car finally pulled in, after some confusion getting the field in order behind it. Vanthoor made quick work of the lapped #19 Lamborghini between him and the leader, kicking off a tense pursuit of Buhk up ahead.
“I just focused on the restart and mantaining a gap,” said Buhk afterwards. “I was pushing, he was pushing, I don’t know that the safety car made the difference either way in the end, traffic could just as easily have affected the outcome too.”
Vanthoor added: “The first three or four laps out of the pits on new tyres, I thought I could do it, I felt confident. But then we hit some traffic, which he dealt with a little faster than me and so built the gap a bit. Then as the tyres wore down his pace was slightly better, I could stay with him but an overtake wasn’t realistic. We’re happy with second though, after Brands Hatch and practice yesterday, we were a bit lost on the setup and we worked late last night figuring it out. If you’d offered us second then we’d definitely have taken it!”
Jeroen Bleekemolen and Indy Dontje respectively had taken over the #16 Lamborghini and #85 HTP Mercedes at the final stops, and looked set to bring those cars to the flag in third and fourth. But Philipp Eng in the #99 ROWE BMW (above) pressured Dontje hard for fourth after the end of the safety-car period, finally slipping past with 11 minutes of racing to go. The battle raged on right to the flag, though, and the gap was just 0.124 seconds in the end.
A typically low-key but effective run from Sainteloc Audi’s Mike Parisy, Christopher Haase and Gregory Guilvert saw the #26 Audi steadily gain places over the duration of the race, eventually taking the chequered flag in a strong seventh, just losing out to the #58 McLaren in the hands of Shane van Gisbergen in the final stint.
The #7 Bentley came home eighth after a fine recovery drive by Steven Kane and Vincent Abril from the lower reaches of the top 20 after Smith was tapped into a spin by Baumann early in the race. Dusseldorp, Catsburg and Klingmann looked on course to make it two ROWE BMWs in the top 10, but dropped from ninth to 11th in the closing stages behind the #28 Stevens/Garcia/Muller WRT Audi and the #101 Attempto Racing Lamborghini.
