MOTORSPORT: BMW wins crash-marred Spa 24h

Spa-Francorchamps: BMW has won a crash-marred Spa 24 Hour race after a 23-hour titanic duel with Bentley and an unpredictable dance with the Belgian weather gods.

In the second consecutive victory for BMW at Spa, Alexander Sims, Philipp Eng and Maxime Martin worked around 15 full-course yellow flag periods and three safety car periods to cruise their M6 GT3 across the line at 1630 local time.

The Rowe-backed M6 followed up on the Z4 GT3’s win last year in the Blancpain GT Series’ double-points race, giving the Bavarian brand its 23rd win on the classic Eifel Mountains circuit. It also gave Martin’s family three Spa 24 Hour winners, as Maxime’s father, Jean-Michel, and his uncle Philippe have also stood on the top step at Spa.

It was eventually followed home by the Mercedes-AMG GT S of Renger van der Zande, Tristian Vautier and Felix Rosenqvist, which just hung on to beat the Audi R8 GT3 of Laurens Vanthoor, Rene Rast and Nico Muller into second by just five seconds. The Mercedes had been delayed by a penalty for cheating in qualifying, while the Audi had struck mechanical problems in the sixth hour, then suffered a puncture trying to fight its way back to the front.

“It’s pure relief that it is over,” Eng told the post-race press conference.

“We had good luck in the yellows and bad luck in the yellows and to be here on top is amazing.”

The other protagonist in the race-long arm wrestle at the front, the M-Sport Bentley driven by Maxime Soulet, Andy Soucek and Wolfgang Reip, ended up in fourth after repeated drive-through penalties for breaching the maximum driving time for two of its drivers.

It also struck misfortune when it pitted a lap behind the BMW under a full-course yellow flag, only for the race to go green again as it rolled to a stop. The BMW had pulled about two minutes in front of the Bentley when the rain returned savagely with half an hour left to run.

The vaunted Mercedes-AMG flotilla was almost invisible during the race after dominating Superpole by taking the top six places, with Maximilian Gotz’s pole time 1.6 seconds quicker than he managed at a test at the same track earlier this month. Stewards stripped the Benzes of their qualifying times because their “ignition timing does not comply with the homologation file”.

They were also all given five-minute stop-go penalties for unsporting behavior for “presenting a car with a technical non-conformity of which the competitor should have been aware”.

Several competitors suggested Mercedes had been caught using a piggyback engine control unit to bypass the homologated unit, though AMG refused to comment on the penalty or the cheat.

Perennial sports car contender Porsche didn’t go home empty handed, though, with Patrick Pilet, Maxime Jousse, Thierry Comac and team owner Raymond Narac winning the Pro-Am class in a 911 GT3-R.

The Australian challenge had crumbled through the night, when its lone top 10 runner, V8 Supercar star Shane van Gisbergen, saw his team mate Come Ledogar hit by another car and crash into the wall.

The car lost several laps having the damage repaired and ending up in 31st place, while Liam Talbot helped his team’s older Ferrari 458 GT3 into 32nd.

The all-Australian Lamborghini Huracan squad of Steve Owen, David Russell and Jonathan Webb finished a patient 35th outright

Brisbane’s Nissan GT Academy winner Matt Simmons drove cleanly and quickly in mixed conditions, with his Pro-Am Nissan GT-R finishing 37th after losing 12 laps with a fuel relay problem during the night.

The young Brisbane driver was handed a difficult job every time he jumped into the car, with either yellow flags or heavy rain, or both, in all four of his driving stints.

“It was a tricky first stint for me. When i went out there it was still behind the safety car, so i had a good set of tyres and had to try to keep the temperature in them,” Simmons said.

“When it went green it was a bit chaotic, getting past some of the slower guys on colder tyres while some of the quicker guys were coming around.

“I had some close moments with cars, but I made up a few positions and kept it clean and had some good pace.

“Some guys were having some big offs so I had to keep my nose clean and keep good pace.”

The two-car Nissan assault was hampered by Balance of Performance rulings that slowed the tall, boxy GT-R in a straight line and left it three to four seconds slower than the leading cars. Simmons was able to run at the same pace as the Pro-class GT-R of teammates Lucas Ordonez, Mitsunori Takaboshi and Alex Buncombe before it was sidelined with a gearbox failure.

“It was a bugger for the team, but it was also a bugger for me that it stopped because me and him were together. It was a good gauge for me to see how we were going.

“I had to search for the wet water to keep the tyres cool in the last stint. It started raining again around the back and I was told I had to manage the tyres for the whole stint and it was trying.

“All of the stints had full-course yellows – yes, i was that guy. I had rain in three of them, the third was wet enough to stay with full wets for the whole time. I had one stint that was almost all behind the safety car.

As the Bentley-BMW battled heated in the morning, Top Gear UK presenter Chris Harris was hit from behind on the run to the famous Eau Rouge corner and spun into the wall. The car has had a long stop for repairs and has returned to the track, only to crash again in heavy rain and retire.