Max Hesse, Dan Harper, and Neil Verhagen, sharing a BMW for two years in some of the biggest races of the year. They have a house at the BMW dealer in Nuremburg. This is the last year of their junior program. Are BMW going to keep them? Or will they release them to other brands or teams or whatnot? Aston was coughing and spluttering on their fuel. Max Hesse is running very well ahead of Augusto Farfus at 2:21.5 dropping away from Jules Gounon it appears. Gounon to Farfus is 27.7 seconds of a gap. Davide Rigon right on the tail of Sebastian Priaulx, Andy Priaulx's son who is third in Gold Cup as he goes off the road and back on, scraping across the gravel trap at Les Combes. The front ened washed away.
Priaulx third in Gold Cup looking for the Mercedes #93 of Chris Froggatt. Leading the race is Jules Gounon as we have started the 21st hour. Nick Yelloly is getting set to take over the #98 Rowe Racing BMW. Nicky Catsburg will finish the race out. Jules Gounon has to pit this lap. Farfus and Hesse pit next time by. Gounon in the lane on the downhill side in the heritage pit lane. Jules Gounon stays in the car as we see the #71 Ferrari in the lane and he could indeed go ahead of Gounon. The lane is clear. Rigon moves to the lead? I think so. Laurens Vanthoor is 12 seconds down. Will the Porsche beat the Meecedes? No. Gounon is now in third behind the Aston Martin.
Aston might have a pit advantage on their final stop. We shall see. BMW #98 pits at lap 440. BMW will have newer, fresher tires. They will be two seconds faster if everything stays together but now we have a Full Course Yellow coming. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Full Course Yellow. This changes things and puts strategy on it's head. Debris being retrieved. Gounon cannot go faster and we go right back to green. Truly brief FCY there! Yikes! We have to analyze #47 and their pit stops. The BMW's are gapped and Nick Yelloly is in #98 while Neil Verhagen is in the #50 and we see Maro Engel in the #55 Mercedes.
The #51 Ferrari and #38 McLaren owe us a stop in ten minutes or so. #47 and #2 might have to do extra pit stops which could really put KCMG and GetSpeed behind the eight ball. I take that back. They can take three stops. Vanthoor should be in with three hours and eight minutes to go. Then, two hours and three minutes, with the final stop at three minutes. We predict when the cars are due to pit but we don't know what the gaps will be. Gounon passes Benji Goethe. The lead Audi is 12th. Unreal.
At any rate, Jules Gounon has driven a Mercedes around this Spa circuit over the last ten days or so. He knows this track with this car, like the back of his hand and he looks competely comfortable with it. Jonathan Hui made a mistake or a late decision whether to pit or not. Laurens Vanthoor at 2:20 he is running slower than expected. The gap is 3.5 seconds between Gounon and Vanthoor as Maro Engel pits. He is in with just over three and a half hours to go as Miguel Molina also pits the Ferrari and Rob Bell in the McLaren. Stint times are concluding before driver changes. Game over for the #57 Winward Racing Mercedes AMG GT3. That Mercedes was the rented mule of this race.
Neil Verhagen now has the wheel of the #50 BMW. Benji Goethe leading Silver and behind him, it is Nicolas Scholle and Tuomas Tujula. So, this is a good scrap. Barwell, Mark Lemmer, team boss says it is engine failure that made them retire and for the first time in five years. Unreal. Maxi Buhk, the 2013 24 Hours of Spa winner when he shared with Maxi Gotz and Bernd Schneider. Nico Scholle through Fangnes, 38 seconds down on Leo Roussel. Goethe is down a ways in Silver Cup. Those last cars that stopped, Buhk, Molina, and Bell, they have to do three more stops and they will stop close to the end.
Rob Bell and Marvin Kirchhofer are near their drive time limits. Ollie Wilkinson did early morning stints and he might have done stuff overnight too but I can't remember. That was hours and hours ago. The Race Predictor calls for the #88 to win but we will have to see. That is assuming a green flag run to the end of the motor race and the unpredictable is going to throw a monkey into the wrench. Thiim vs. Gounon, this could indeed be the battle for the win in about three and a half hour's time. Rob Bell in tenth place in the #38 Jota McLaren. He is the last car on the lead lap and McLaren doing very well with their reliability.
Marvin Kirchhofer will take over for a finishing double stint. Kirchhofer says they were having trouble early but have improved and they are taking things as they come. Marvin Kirchhofer started his career in open wheel before getting to sports cars and the R Racing Aston Martin's in GT. Andrea Caldarelli has taken over the K-PAX Lambo from Jordan Pepper. Gounon has been eating chunks of that giant cookie that resembles the margin between he and Thiim. The days of any 24-hour race being a persistence endurance test? Forget about it, mate! It's a sprint! This track has been bone dry all weekend. No rain whatsoever, really. The scrap is between Gounon and Thiim. The Mercedes which won the Bathurst 12 Hours, is registered for IGTC points but the Aston Martin isn't.
Thiim wants a run out of Stavelot and through Paul Frere curve. This is your archetypal doppelganger scenario and the #56 Porsche gets in the way! Giorgio Roda, Mikkel Pedersen, oh dear! That was a close shave! Giorgio Roda, please move! Gounon darts past Felipe Nasr ex-F1 and prototype racer soon to be a prototype racer again, to stay with the Aston Martin. Gounon wants this. You know he won't stop pushing. He is applying the blowtorch. Gounon almost had it and into the final corner, Thiim goes wide out of the chicane. Side by side. Thiim won't quite. Side by side down the hill. Gounon to Eau Rouge. Thiim spins at Eau Rouge and gets back on track! That was unreal! He has flat spotted his tires. Those Pirelli P Zero's will come off that car in the shape of cubes!
That tire is totally shredded! In replay, side by side, one has more grip than the other, and a light touch and Thiim spins off the road! The rubber is shredded off that Pirelli tire and yours truly almost spit out his coffee watching that! Holy donuts! That was insane! So, you see, the Mercedes, he is going to have a horrid vibration. Jules Gounon will have a clag fest n those tires! All sorts of crap picked up there! He's headed for the lane, Thiim is. Game over for the boys at Aston Martin. The Beechdean ice cream is melting. Marco Sorensen is into the car. The pit crew were taking a nap and were awakened by that shemozzle! Sheesh! Nikki Thiim may be as cool as a cucumber. I want to see how flat those tires are. The Pirelli P Zero square tire.
Nikki Thiim says I just did a bleeping 360 up through Eau Rouge. We didn't have the pure pace and we knew the BMW had a better pace, but we are in the final rounds of this fight. I was there. I don't need to see that. Apologies for the language. Maximilian Gotz leads the motor race on the road. Davide Rigon and Ferrari lead Jules Gounon by a second. Maximilian Gotz says he is confident that things will go well and the GetSpeed car has pace even though there are pit stop issues they had, and crash damage, and strategy issues. But they are back to the sharp end. They are willing to gamble to win. That is their strategy. Less traffic will help, and the Mercedes has pace and speed and going offline is not a good idea because you get pick up and other crap on your tires.
As long as you are on the lead lap, you will have a chance to win this thing. Jules Gounon driving out of skin chasing the Ferrari, the completely yellow Ferrari. The straight-line speed between the Ferrari and the Benz is identical but the BMW M4 GT3, that bad boy has the most speed of them all. The BMW M4 GT3, that thing is a secret weapon. Time penalty for Christopher Mies for forcing the #7 Inception McLaren of Ollie Milroy off the road. An imminent pit stop for Ferrari. They will be in the lane this lap I believe and we'll see Gounon in the lane, too. 461 laps now complete. Porsche #47 now has Nick Tandy at the controls. Tandy ninth and the last car on the lead lap. With the temperature rising the tires will react differently and Gounon goes to the lead as the Ferrari dives for the pit lane.
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