Cars, you can tweak them, and they are still flying. The engineer says to the driver, condescendingly, "you bitch and moan about the handling of the car when you tweak the nose, but you are still running unbelievable lap times as you complain to me, 'I can't drive the car! It is steering like a pig!" Kenny Habul pointed out it turns one direction really well. Bastian Buus, meanwhile, being harried by Lucas Auer. We have seen a great sports car racing heritage coming out of Denmark in the past few decades. Bastian Buus follows such luminaries as Tom Kristensen, Allan Simonsen, Jan Magnussen, John Nielsen, to name a few. Tom Kristensen has a whole camp of Danish fans even though Kristensen does not drive anymore.
If you followed the centenary edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans last year in 2023, you know that Eurosport invited Tom Kristensen along with Leigh Diffey and Calvin Fish to do the play by play of the centenary race. That was very, very special. Bastian Buus applying his trade primarily in GT World Challenge Asia in Pro-Am and he has raced in GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup for the Lionspeed Porsche team and was fourth at the Bathurst 12 Hours with Phantom Global Racing and ran 12th at the Nurburgring 24 Hours, the shortened Nurburgring 24 Hours due to rain and fog, earlier this summer.
We are now within a lap or two of the leaders needing to pit again. If there should be a yellow, pit lane will be closed but then there is a five-minute buffer on top of your 65-minute stint length as compensation. Mikael Grenier in the #130 Mercedes-AMG Team GruppeM Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 is the first to hit the lane on this sequence. He shares the car with Maro Engel and Jules Gounon. They are going to keep Grenier in for a double stint as Conor Daly comes in aboard the #99 Random Vandals Racing BMW M4 GT3 as well. Daly wants to be back in an IndyCar full-time as well but maybe next year he can race the #99.
He might just be back at the Indianapolis 500 next year. He has his own cheering section having started 11 Indianapolis 500s in his career, as the #29 Turner Motorsports BMW has pitted among others. All these stops ook very smooth and with no trouble. We are past the three-hour mark in the Indianapolis 8 Hours as in replay, Dries Vanthoor bounds over the curbs, and he cannot go all the way over and the stewards won't like it. It was on his in lap. So, both the #31 and #33 Team WRT BMWs are in the pits. Dries Vanthoor and Augusto Farfus. We are going to keep an eye on Mikael Grenier. He will get back on the lead lap.
Dries Vanthoor has done a solid job as you'd expect. He won this race last year with Philipp Eng and Sheldon van der Linde. The sister #33 has five seconds of penalty time added to their stop because of the infraction on the previous stop. Did the #130 stay close enough to make a pass? OK. #33 has stopped and Grenier is pushing hard. Farfus doing a double stint and a long drive through the pits. Both championships use tire warmers, for the last year, for the North American championship with the potential exception of this race at "The Brickyard".
This is going to be nip and tuck with the BMW exiting the pit lane and the Mercedes absolutely steaming towards turn one at full chat! Ah. Grenier at turn two nips ahead of Farfus for now. He will have a chance to gap the BMW and poor old Farfus is thinking, "ugh! Not again!" These two resume their duel, Mercedes vs. BMW. Stuttgart vs. Munich. So, pit stop mistakes might come back to bite some of these teams and you'd hate to be the mechanic at WRT or any top endurance racing team for that matter, who made a mistake that cost precious seconds in the lane. The team manager will be judge, jury, and executioner on that one.
The minimum times were good for all of the front runners. We have other pit lane callers including the #10 Herberth Motorsport Porsche that qualified on pole for this race. The top two in the North American rankings, Fanatec GT World Challenge America, DXDT Corvette and Wright Motorsports Porsche, run nose to tail in fifth and sixth overall. It is a battle afoot between Tommy Milner and Laurin Heinrich. That is massive! Alec Udell started #63 well. We thought that Heinrich and Skeer would each do triple stints to finish the race but that is not at all the strategy being employed at Wright Motorsports. Sometimes, my guesses, as an analyst can go totally wrong.
I am only the messenger. Don't shoot me! Meanwhile, the #64 DXDT Corvette is back on track after the completion of the front suspension repairs. Patrick Liddy is at the controls, way down in 21st place. They did not stay in the garage long enough for the #38 ST Racing BMW to overhaul them and John Capestro-Dubets remains stone last in the field sharing that car with Samantha Tan and Neil Verhagen. Luca Mars is back driving the #93 Racer's Edge Motorsports Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 with Zach Veach and Gabby Chaves. Mars had a fabulous first stint.
Ooh! Oh dear! Contact from Mars' nose to the rear left corner of Liddy in the Corvette! Egad! You could see that coming a mile away. Patrick Liddy has a bunch of experience in Lamborghini Super Trofeo but his situational awareness has not kicked in yet on his stint. That was a late cut across and Mars established himself. #64 is well down the order. Thankfully, both cars escaped damage with that massive clatter. Leave the other chap you are racing against, a lane to work with. Don't get feisty at this stage. Clam down. There's a lot of time on the board yet.
There has been a driver change in the #33 Team WRT BMW and Dan Harper, the Ulsterman, is back behind the wheel with the task of continuing what his co-driver Augusto Farfus was doing, chasing down that pesky anniversary liveried GruppeM Mercedes, the #130 car of Mikael Grenier, the French Canadian. From last, to sixth, that is how far Harper went in his first stint but now, he is fighting hard for second and maybe for the lead, so things are going to get more difficult. With all the chopping and changing, this has allowed the sister #31 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 of South African Sheldon van der Linde to extend his lead in the motor race to 22 and a half seconds!
van der Linde, for all intents and purposes, he is currently on a Saturday drive. The gap in the North American Pro class is bigger than we previously thought, between Tommy Milner and Laurin Heinrich. Heinrich just uncorked a 1:23.8 lap time. That is three and a half hundredths of a second off fastest lap and he is coming hard. Heinrich is a dynamo and remember, DXDT and Wright Motorsports are competing for the North American Fanatec GT World Challenge SRO title. We are also now watching the battle for second between Grenier in the Mercedes and Harper in the BMW.
Yes, I repeat myself. But there is a reason for that. We have at least two battles here at the top of the shop to keep our eyes glued to for the next wee while. We remain focused on the Grenier and Harper fight while van der Linde in the race lead is motoring on. van der Linde has been monotonous but consistent with his lap times and this is what you want to see a factory driver do. This is why the factory teams supported by manufacturers pay their top drivers mucho dinero, to perform at the highest level through hours and hours of these endurance sports car races. It is nothing new. It has been happening for decades and decades now since sports car racing took off about a century ago.
What we are also going to keep an eye on is which cars come alive in the waning hours of the race when the track cools down and the sun lowers in the fall Indiana sky. Right now, as sung for so many years at the Indianapolis 500 in "Back Home Again in Indiana", "the new mown hay sends out it's fragrance through the fields I used to roam". But, as we begin to "dream about the moonlight on the Wabash", later in the evening, things are really, really going to begin coming alive. Believe me. This foreshadowing I keep using, might come to the fore.
If you are close and your car swings the balance into the right direction, that could be key factors for the victory. The last hour will be in darkness with the overnight Fahrenheit temperatures plummeting 20 to 30 degrees tonight when we get towards opening the pay window. Blimey! While I wax eloquently, I spy with my little eye, Harper closing in hand over fist on Grenier, look. Grenier runs deep into turn one allowing Harper to close hand over fist. Harper runs the high lije through turn four, high, wide and handsome.
Now we see the drag race down Hulman Boulevard to the braking zone for turn seven. Grenier in the Benz guarding the middle. He feels the heat from the Ulsterman, right on his six. Harper setting up the pass, for a late lunge! BMW staying even with AMG. They touch, and poor old Harper has the door slammed in his face and has to give it up. Grenier says, "Is that all you've got? Sorry, sunbeam. You need to bring some more power." Harper was miffed because he was sure Grenier was going to put the squeeze play on him, but he didn't quite do it before making the switcheroo. I don't know, but maybe the stewards are considering giving Grenier a warning for weaving.
Harper already had the overlap but also felt he needed to force the issue, and Grenier was a sitting duck. Thank goodness Harper played it smart. With their squabbling, Harper and Grenier have lost even more time to Sheldon van der Linde who is extending his lead and grinning like a stuck possum behind the wheel of his BMW. Grenier in fighting hammer and tongs with Harper. All these two blokes are doing is allowing van der Linde to whistle off into the distance and insert the provincial yet evil laughter of a movie villain. Conor Daly is hanging tough in fourth it appears, but he hasn't made his way to the coattails of this squabble yet between Grenier and Harper.
So, things seem copacetic at the top end of town. Random Vandals are still in the conversation. But this early in the going, this scrapping between Harper and Grenier is not intelligent. A relatively minor penalty to convey for Trent Hindman in the #85 RS1 Porsche, two seconds added to his next pit stop for coming in under the minimum required pit time previously. Hindman puts a lap on the #21 Car Collection Motorsports Porsche, driven by "Hash", Ashish Patel. He is originally from the United States but has never raced at Indianapolis. He wanted to race last year but had to recover from a massive leg injury skiing.
It was not pretty, and thankfully, he recovered. He has been racing in the International GT Open championship. I have never heard of him, but he is a character. He has one name, like the pop music star, Beyonce, for example. Alex Fontana is the other driver in that car. Alex Fontana grew up as an IndyCar fan and painted his Formula 2 car to look like the late Justin Wilson's car. Alex Fontana, during the offseason he spent his time reading a book about the IndyCar split back in the mid 1990s and that is how much he loves the speedway, IndyCars, and this sport.
This is the first stateside race for Alex Fontana, and he raced in single seaters against Alex Palou, probably in the GP3 category which is now back to being called Formula 3 like it used to be. Alex Fontana also raced in Formula E, at Battersea Park. Those were the last open wheel starts he ever had. Alex Palou has brought the #4 Mercedes-AMG GT3 in for Mercedes-AMG Team Lone Star Racing. He was spectacular in qualifying! He almost grabbed pole! He had not raced a GT3 cars since 2019, a McLaren 720S GT3 which is a different car altogether.
Palou was instantly up to speed, though. Pretty amazing. Grenier and Harper are still at it. This scrap has gone on now for two consecutive stints. We saw Farfus and racing with Grenier earlier. I cannot remember when or if Maro Engel or Jules Gounon have driven the #130 Mercedes yet. He has actually been in the #130 the whole time, has Grenier. The fight begins anew as Grenier runs wide and Harper is continuing to push. The BMW gets stronger relative to the competition as the stint goes on. We are also seeing a fun battle for the final step on the podium in Fanatec GT World Challenge America as we have Bill Auberlen fending off the challenge of Trent Hindman. So, this is the #28 ST Racing BMW M4 GT3 vs. the #85 RS1 Porsche 911 GT3R (992).
Auberlen, again, sharing with Varun Choksey and Philipp Eng, while Trent Hindman shares the #85 RS1 Porsche alongside Jake Pedersen and Kay van Berlo. Hindman has raced a bit of everything in GT3 and Hindman makes a neat and tidy pass on Auberlen who surrenders for the time being and doesn't fight. A savvy move by Auberlen and he gave Hindman plenty of room, looking at the big picture. Sadly, ST Racing's hopes are running out of steam. Once the #63 and #120 cars get to the halfway mark, Choksey and Auberlen will be eliminated as championship contenders. So, in another 37 minutes, the Auberlen/Choksey/Eng team will be fighting only for class positions in the race itself.
RS1 was one of the only North American SRO teams to make it to the pole shootout. Trent Hindman is the anchor alongside Hindman and van Berlo. RS1 also have a slim lead in the Pirelli GT4 America championship heading into the final race here at Indianapolis tomorrow. Please tune in with us to find out how that one goes. Looking forward to bringing it to you. One day at a time. One race at a time. Racing mirrors life itself. How do you make sure you give both teams you drive for, the fair share of time to do the jobs you are supposed to? Commitments and balancing them is what it is all about. RS1 won the GT3 championship last year in SRO with Stevan McAleer and Eric Filgueiras.
Eric Filgueiras will be racing with John Capestro-Dubets for the Pirelli GT4 America title tomorrow and John Capestro-Dubets has moved up a place currently at the wheel of the #38 ST Racing BMW M4 GT3 on their recovery drive. They are 22nd overall after losing 40 minutes with fuel pump problems. The car they passed is not eligible to score points, the Arjun Maini driven #888 Triple Eight JMR Mercedes. They are 31 laps down to the field and need to get to the four-hour mark and add an additional 31 laps to whatever their total is at that time.
Sheldon van der Linde continues to extend his lead over Grenier and Harper and it is now at almost 27 seconds, 26.7 seconds to be exact. The BMW is totally unperturbed by the curbs in turn one, one of the three higher curbs, straightening to corners to gain lap times. Don't try and do that and wait to get back to power because the car will be unloaded through the corner, and you don't want to punch it because then you will certainly spin out. Mikael Grenier had his eyes on IndyCar and was in Indy Lights, now Indy Next. He raced the old Freedom 100 here on the oval and now he has turned his focus to sports car racing in the last decade and has found a home as a plug and play driver for Mercedes.
He has had a lot more endurance racing overseas than he has stateside, but he is really showing his talent, is Grenier. We are checking Alex Palou's lap times aboard the #4 Lone Star Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3. Palou is not at the top of the board, but he is running lap times at 1:24.3. So, he is very consistent and very quick. We now come back to Ricardo Agostini aboard the #88 AF Corse Ferrari, 296 GT3 currently in 12th in the overall. He is hanging tough and has the car in contention for a class podium in Pro-Am. AF Corse are such a professional operation, and they run everything and anything having to do with Ferrari in sports car racing these days.
Everything from the 499P prototypes down through Ferrari Challenge and GT3 as well. They are the factory squad for Ferrari including the Hypercars in the FIA World Endurance Championship with two Le Mans wins to their name. The battle for the lead in the Fanatec GT World Challenge America Pro class is still hard fought in fifth and sixth overall with Tommy Milner ahead in the #63 DXDT Corvette but having Laurin Heinrich in the #120 Wright Motorsports Porsche cut slices into that lead. He is like Pac Man devouring marbles trying to catch Milner, or he just continues slicing and eating the cake and is going to be finished with that cake soon if he catches up to Milner here shortly.
Agostini got by the #91 Regulator Racing Mercedes of Jeff Burton, earlier. Burton has had the best racing season of his career in 2024 as the team took advantage of a rule change in Fanatec GT World Challenge America, of course. You can nominate driver one and driver two rather than your driver lineups being locked in by the rules. Burton has enjoyed this year and gotten used to the car more. We are also watching (while we have this conversation about the #91 team), the #63 DXDT Corvette leading in Fanatec GT World Challenge America Pro, Tommy Milner at the wheel of it. Now, we return to the Dan Harper and Mikael Grenier story.
It seems while the stint continues the BMW is going from strength to strength while the Mercedes could be losing pace. Harper, Hesse and Farfus are a backup for the lead Team WRT BMW of van der Linde, Weerts, and Vanthoor, should anything happen, that could affect the championship as far as IGTC is concerned. Always good to have more than one bullet in the gun for these long-distance races. BMW are well positioned with a little less than four and a half hours to go. Conor Daly runs fourth in the #99 Random Vandals Racing BMW M4 GT3. Talking of the suspension setups for the BMWs, their suspension setups for rebound and shock damping that can deal with the curbs.
If you get with an engineer who knows their spring and shock technology, you can be working your tail off to find lap time and then change the shocks and... boom! You've got it. Bad news. Bad news, for the #32 GMG Racing Porsche with the front bonnet up in the garage and Ayhancan Guven strapped into the drivers' seat with nothing he can do until the team diagnoses and fixes this problem. Dear, oh dear. His championship hopes could evaporate. They had a puncture and a penalty too. Mikael Grenier wants another bite of the cherry, but he is feeling the heat from Dan Harper, still. Like I said, the repaid Ulsterman is giving it everything he's got.
The battle for second and third place has now been raging for an hour and a half which is the typical duration of one of our shorter championship races in Fanatec GT World Challenge America of course. Mercedes and BMW. Where have we seen this before? This is a historic duel. Alex Palou has the yellow and blue #4 Lone Star Racing Mercedes just ahead of these two albeit in the running order, the Spaniard is 15th. He is just behind Turkish racer Antares Au in the #10 Herberth Motorsport Porsche and just ahead of Jay Schreibman in the #163 AF Corse Ferrari.
Notably, these two in second and third, Grenier and Harper are not catching Palou. But the #4 car has had a litany of problems throughout the race thus far. Lone Star Racing and Alex Palou are out of contention. That being said, Palou is pulling away from Mikael Grenier in second overall. If they hadn't had the issues, they would be much higher up the order. In the pole shootout everyone wondered, why on earth would you put the Spaniard in the car? Well, there's obviously a very good reason why the team did. Conor Daly is down from the top three but maintaining lap times. Daly is doing a double stint. In the second half of the race in car #99 we are going to see both Kenton Koch and Connor De Philippi, more often.
Laurin Heinrich is now running just seven seconds behind Tommy Milner in the scrap for fifth place and the Fanatec GT World Challenge Pro class. The DXDT camp are going to be pushing Wright Motorsports with all they have, and vice versa. Now then, Harper on the inside tries squeezing Grenier out and Harper makes his move. Bill Auberlen wanted no part of that so wisely he lets the top two come through. Auberlen aboard the #28 ST Racing BMW M4 GT3 running eighth between Trent Hindman in the #85 RS1 Porsche 911 GT3R (992), and Lucas Auer in the #75 75 Express Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Dan Harper has now completed the pass and prevails in a duel with Canadian Mikael Grenier. Sheldon van der Linde's gap at the top is almost 30 seconds. They have whistled off into the distance. Dries Vanthoor, Charles Weerts, and Sheldon van der Linde have controlled this event. Sheldon van der Linde, the 2022 DTM champion, from Johannesburg, South Africa. He and his brother Kelvin van der Linde have both made names in the GT racing ranks in the last decade. We see the Vanthoor brothers and the van der Linde brothers running so well. Sheldon van der Linde became the first South African driver to compete in the DTM.
He started in that championship in 2019 when they were still running the "proper" DTM cars, the space age, tube frame, Class 1 touring cars with their normally aspirated 4-liter V8 powerplants. He had much success there. In 2024, Sheldon van der Linde has driven at Bathurst, Nurburgring, and Spa, and now at Indianapolis, doing all four IGTC races. Man, oh man! Here we go. Battle afoot between Milner and Heinrich, just as we thought. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Hold the phone. I got tricked. That is the #64 delayed DXDT Corvette in the hands of Patrick Liddy. I have been fooled!
Liddy gives a wide berth to Laurin Heinrich who comes through down the frontstretch and across the yard of bricks another time. Tommy Milner is ahead by 5.3 second over Laurin Heinrich and it would be incredible if Milner could indeed catch up to Heinrich and then, the battle we were hoping for just a second ago would be truly afoot. We wonder how Wright Motorsports are going to slice the cake in the second half of the race. We believe that with his double stint earlier, Adam Adelson's task for the day is complete. Elliott Skeer, I think has done a single.
Whoa! Heinrich gets loose and is all over the shop into the turn! That was a massive save! Yikes! That was all arms and elbows inside the cockpit. Let's see the exterior view! Ugh! He dropped a wheel, the right rear, into the dirt, and he's sliding sideways at corner entry! He gets out of the grass and straightens it out. Blimey! That was a close shave! I think Heinrich created a radius into the turn that was just too wide! Holy smokes! Heinrich is in attack mode, but his heart rate had to fly through the roof there!
Heinrich using all the road and all the curbs, shortcutting the corners to the point the rules allow. Milner just ran a 1:25.5 and Heinrich, 1:24.3. The gap is closing. DXDT know they're in trouble. The way the rules are, you cannot do something where you just pull a blinder on strategy and tuck your rival up like a kipper. Can you tweak on the car? Do you have what you have? When the track cools, maybe things just won't work out. If a car does not have the power, it is too hard to race. Once Heinrich gets to Milner he could make easy sailing of it, and perhaps do just what I said, tucking his rival up like a kipper. In case you don't know what that means, that is another way of saying taking someone totally by surprise.
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