Raffaele Marciello still believes in a back-to-back victory, but we'll see what happens in these last couple hours. The BMW always seems to be able to answer the riddle. We are close to the Nurburgring Nordschleife and the German border. Intercontinental GT Challenge will include the Nurburgring 24 Hours as part of the calendar next year. Phillipp Eng has done the best sector on lap 488. The top four are all now lapping in the 2:18 range. Kevin Estre drives his way through Bruxelles corner. 488 laps now completed. 2,124 miles. A clean pass made by Phillipp Eng. He has 16.3 seconds over Jules Gounon. 2:20.794 through traffic. Eng is a double winner of the 24 Hours of Spa in 2016 and 2018.
A third win in the 24 Hours of Spa is hard to achieve. Phillip Eng could do it and it's close racing between a couple Audi's. Lucas Legeret gets his elbows out in a high risk area of the track! Yikes! He is chasing the Lamborghini of Clemens Schmid. Kevin Estre uncorks an absolute best. Hammer time, mate. Hammer time. The Martin family has won the 24 Hours of Spa several times. Maxime, his dad, and his uncle. Touring cars have raced here and so do GT3 cars. There have also been the monstrous GT1 and great GT2 cars that have raced here in the past. Matteo Cairoli is still motoring and for the #20 car, they landed the pole, and Antares Au is positive. They have pace.
They fell down the order but are indeed recovering. They are 13th overall and lead in class in the Bronze division. Don't count your chickens until they hatch. Maxime Martin in the pit lane for service. The drivers run this event and then come away from it as more well rounded racing drivers. Here at Spa there are three mega high speed corners. Maxime Martin blasts back on track and Fred Vervisch is back into the race. Antares Au is the leading Independent Cup entrant. Good onya' mate. You can see the man is intelligent.
Phillipp Eng continues leading the race and this car started 26th. If the car stays in front it would be the second GT3 car to start outside the top 20. We'll see. 492 laps completed. 2,142 miles. Through Bruxelles and into Speaker's Corner. Then into Double Gauche. The #56 Porsche is in the lane and now the GrtSpeed Mercedes is off the road with Alex Peroni spnning the car, the Australian. Peroni sharing with Florian Scholze, Kenneth Heyer, and Patrick Assenheimer. Peroni has run LMP2 and now GT3. Glenn van Berlo is leading Silver Cup I believe in the #85 Lamborghini.
We started with 70 cars, 44 cars are on track. Make that 42. 28 cars are retired or in the garage. Nicky Catsburg running very well in the #75 SunEnergy1 Mercedes AMG GT3. He is being chased by Nico Menzel for Pro-Am honors and Kevin Estre biffs another Porsche out of the way! That is a no prfoessional car, a Bronze car, the #66 Audi of Dylan Pereira. That might yield a penalty for a Pro car hitting a non Pro car. Hard to judge that penalty. Eng 15 seconds to the good on Jules Gounon. Audi #17 of Niki Thiim, scything through traffic.
He cannot lose contact with Jules Gounon. Thiim makes the move despite the high risk. Gounon is stymied, bottled up behind another car. Thiim is coming in a hurry, a big hurry. Thiim is close to being able tace mano e mano with Gounon. Thiim drafts by the Mercedes. Bully the other bloke to give you the ground. Luca Stolz has Laurin Heinrich right behind. Heinrich must pit. Mercedes vs. Porsche. Stolz has run a 63 minute stint. #777 in the pit lane and Luca Stolz is done driving so it would be Lucas Auer or Fabian Schiller getting back in.
Maybe the team is adding oil to the car as well. It is from a pressurized can Cam't ne too sure. Luca Stolz maybe has run out of drive time. Laurin Heinrich is fifth. Phillipp Eng gives us six cars on the lead lap or so I believe that is the case. Working lap 498. Thiim and Gounon right together. Gounon s feeling the heat. Two different personalities. Kevin Estre negotiating a wave of traffic ahead of him. Eng is the leader with an hour and a half to go. Ricardo Feller is running well but the fight is truly between Jules Gounon and Nikki Thiim.
Who will come out on top? Niki Thiim was compromised there a wee bit. Klaus Bachler leads in class. Now then, there will be one more pit stop for the leaders as they fly through Pouhon corner again. Thhim is shown to still be quicker than Gounon. The gap is closing. 500 laps completed. 2,176 miles. Tom Gamble and Dean MacDonald have done a great job driving their Gold rated McLaren. It has been difficult but they've held on and kept going. That is what endurance races are all about. There's pain and pleasure, equally. The Winward Racing Mercedes is more than ten laps down. Stick it back in the garage ad
The Kruetten.Williams./Simmenauer trio BMW M4 GT3 could get a good run today. The top flight runners are running in the 2:20 range, race winning pace. Phillipp Eng will take the BMW home to the checkered flag and we will have bright sunshine for the finish of the 2023 24 Hours of Spa. Nico Menzel in Pro-Am, a Nurburgring 24 Hours class winner, running in German GT and his father, Christian Menzel is an experienced and accomplished Porsche racer. Phillip Eng's lead has ballooned to 20 seconds.
Erwan Creed in the #888 Audi for CSA Racing, he is running third in Pro-Am. Creed ran prototypes in several championships earlier in his career. The damage to the #911 Pure Racing Porsche is worst, taped up with not just duct tape but bubblegum and string. German driver Joel Sturm will take over the car to the finish. Headlight technology is like a laser beam and it has come leaps and bounds from what it used to be. Eng runs ahead of Gounon and Thiim, Hit your marks. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Jules Gounon will go for it with outright pace. Thiim tries unsettling Gounon and he cannot do that. Lucas Legeret pulls over to let his rivals by! Maybe he got word on the radio, "let those chaps go, they are racing for a podium." Kevin Estre has damage to the rear diffuser of the Manthey EMA Porsche but you'd only make those repairs in extreme conditions andnnot with just over an hour to go. Nikki Thiim's most recent lap was 2:21 dead.
Jules Gounon will make his final pit stop. New boots, a tank of fuel, and on the way to a second place finish for the defending race champion. Klaus Bachler continues to lead Bronze. Laurin Heinrich and Klaus Bachler slithers his way through the escape road as Matteo Cairoli takes the Bronze class lead. These should be the final pt stops we are seeing for the race as Phillipp Eng will pit in a couple more laps. We have just over an hour of racing remaining. Ricardo Feller is in for his final pit stop as well.
Fresh Pirelli P Zero tires for Jules Gounon. Nikki Thiim pits from second spot. The team goes to work. Gounon makes his final pit stop and the same for #17.
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