Frikadelli Racing scored a historic overall victory in the 2023 running of the Nürburgring 24 Hours with its #30 Ferrari 296 GT3. Nicky Catsburg, Earl Bamber, Felipe Fernandez Laser and David Pittard were all masterful for the entire race, scoring an unforgettable win for the fan-favourite team and Ferrari as a manufacturer.
The result marks the first overall win in the event for the local team, Ferrari’s first, and the first for an Italian brand. It is also the first major 24-hour victory for the brand-new 296 GT3, which was both fast and reliable all weekend, breaking the previous distance record of 159 laps with a 162-lap run.
The win came after the team suffered a slow puncture that could have cost it a shot at victory in the fifth hour. But luck was on its side, as the puncture occurred late in the lap, meaning Catsburg, who was leading by 27 seconds at the time, was able to quickly dive into the pits. There, the team replaced the entire rear end during a standard timed stop, and sent the car on its way having only lost around a minute.
From then on the team had to fight back to the front while running out of sequence with the rest of the front-runners, claiming a true lead once again by the halfway mark. In the second half of the race it was all about survival and building a lead which at one point was nearly three minutes.
Pressure was applied though, all the way to the flag, by BMW and its front-running cars. Initially, both ROWE-entered M4 GT3s and the #72 from BMW Junior Team were in the fight, but both the #99 ROWE and #72 crashed out in the night hours, leaving the #98 to gun for BMW’s 21st N24 win alone – from 31st on the starting grid.
The lead gap did shrink in the final hours as Frikadelli moved to manage its advantage and ensure it didn’t need a splash in the final hour, but Dries Vanthoor in the final stint was unable to reel in Pittard who was trusted to bring the car home. The gap was reduced to under a minute in the final dash to the flag, but the Briton successfully held off the hard-charging Belgian and crossed the line 26.9 seconds ahead, claiming a first N24 win for himself, Bamber and Laser, and a second for Catsburg.
“It was an amazing team effort. We worked very hard and had a near-perfect race. The car was rapid all week. I have been hunting a win here for 10 years, it’s very special. It’s special for Klaus (Abberlen) too,” Bamber said after the race in summary.
“Today showed that even if you have a fast car it’s a difficult race,” added Catsburg. “There were so many accidents and we still had to survive. In the night it was cold, in the day it was hot, it was hard to make the right choice, but we made it in the end.”
Before discussing the rest of the SP9 field, a word on the late Sabine Schmitz. For her widower Klaus Abberlen and his team, this win was clearly for her. It was an emotional ride for all involved and a well-deserved outcome for a team that is adored by hordes of fans local to the circuit and around the world.
After locking out the front row in Qualifying, Mercedes-AMG’s teams were unable to convert the outright speed on Friday into a third overall victory in the race, something the brand has craved since it last won in 2016.
The #4 AMG Team Bilstein AMG GT3 came closest, after a strong performance from Raffaele Marciello, Philip Ellis, Edoardo Mortara and Luca Stolz. The car had an early setback when it was penalised for obstructing the #3 GetSpeed Mercedes in pit lane during the first round of stops, but recovered nicely. While it wasn’t a win, the #4 crew will be pleased to have finished first of the Mercedes runners after Stolz made a move for third on the #2 GetSpeed Mercedes in the final hours to secure a set of trophies.
The #2 GetSpeed Mercedes went on to finish fourth. The team will be mortified to have finished off the podium, after both its #2 and #3 entries had the pace to challenge. The #2 led a considerable portion of the first half of the race before falling away, while the #3 retired overnight after a collision with a slower car for Maro Engel damaged the car significantly.
Completing the top five in the overall running order was the Rutronik Porsche 911 GT3 R 992 of Dennis Olsen, Matteo Cairoli and Julien Andlauer. The trio showed flashes of pace throughout and emerged as Porsche’s leading crew overnight after Falken Motorsports’ charge with the #44 faltered. However, fifth will come as a disappointment, it wasn’t the N24 debut that Porsche will have hoped for with its new 992-spec GT3.
Falken’s aforementioned #44 example was the only Porsche that looked capable of finishing on the podium when the race settled down on Saturday evening. However, an off at Flugplatz during the night and a puncture on Sunday morning cost the team a huge amount of time.
Manthey Racing may have had a shot too, but it was a disastrous race for the seven-time winner. The #911 ‘Grello’ machine had a fast start from 20th on the grid, Kevin Estre slaloming through the field before a puncture sent him off into the barriers at Tiergarten at the end of the second hour.
The repair work required dropped the car down the order and out of the running before the team eventually threw in the towel overnight and withdrew it from the race after just 62 laps.
Audi Sport, celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2023, will be similarly disappointed with its result. Amid all the rumours concerning the future of the ‘Four Rings’ in customer GT racing, it was not a good N24 for the German brand and its fleet of handsome R8s. Its highest-placed finisher at the end of the race was the #39 Team Land R8 LMS GT3 evo II, which had a quiet run to sixth. The car finished off the lead lap and never featured on pace.
The only Audi that looked to be in the running for the overall victory was the #1 Scherer Sport PHX R8 of the defending winners, which led briefly after a mercurial run from Frederic Vervisch, before being handed a huge 4-minute 36-second time penalty for not respecting flag signals.
The R8 later retired at the hands of Vervisch, when he had an off caused by an oil spillage on the GP loop in the early hours of Sunday morning, which also caught out Frank Stippler in the PHX team’s #5 Audi who crashed out too.
That left the Phoenix team, on team boss Ernst Moser’s final N24, with a best finish of 11th for its #16 R8.
In SP9 Pro/Am, the #20 WTM by Rinaldi came home first and seventh overall, finishing ahead of the #6 AMG Team Bilstein Mercedes-AMG that crossed the line eighth overall and second in the sub-class. It was a superb, faultless run for Leonard Weiss, Jochen Krumbach, Daniel Keilwitz and Indy Dontje.
The #27 ABT Sportsline Lamborghini that charged to the lead at the start finished ninth after it was delayed heavily by an early puncture, ahead of the aforementioned #44 Falken Porsche that rounded out the top 10.
In the other classes, the highest finisher in the overall standings was the #161 Cup 2 class Porsche run by KKrämer Racing, which won the hotly contested category by just over a minute. SP10 was hard-fought throughout too and eventually won by the #86 BMW M4 GT4 run by FK Performance, which finished a lap ahead of KCMG’s #47 Toyota Supra which spent a significant chunk of the race out front.
For the pair of brand new Mercedes-AMG GT2s in SP-X it was a tricky race, as both cars hit trouble. The #46 run by HRT was the better placed of the two by the end, crossing the line 34th overall after 143 tours of the circuit.
SP3, the category that features the pair of Toyota Team Thailand Corollas, the Kissling Manta and Dacia Logan, was won by the #119 Toyota. The Manta did make the finish despite having significant repair work to its rear end overnight on its return to the race.
It wasn’t a fairytale run for the Logan, however, which was read-ended at high-speed by the SP9 class Dinamic Porsche in the early hours of Sunday morning. The impact destroyed the car, and forced the hard-working team to pack up early.
Images courtesy of Frozenspeed
