Hartog Hails Indy 8H Drive as “Biggest Gift” After Birthday Win

Loek Hartog described the opportunity to join Herberth Motorsport at the Indianapolis 8 Hour powered by AWS as the “biggest gift” after taking a birthday class win in Pro-Am.

The Dutchman, along with Patric Niederhauser and newly crowned Intercontinental GT Challenge Independent Cup champion Antares Au, bounced back from a two-lap deficit to beat Turner Motorsport and Regulator Racing to the class victory.

For Hartog, the win not only came just two weeks after completing a weekend sweep at Porsche Carrera Cup North America at the same circuit, but also on the same day he celebrated his 22nd birthday.

“Double congratulations, I guess,” Hartog told Sportscar365.

“I didn’t realize actually, but the biggest gift was I think to drive this race, to be able to do something like this. I have to thank Antares massively for that, the team for being so incredibly good [and] having a good car.

“Very happy with my stint. It was really good from my end, I guess. In the middle of the race I managed to get us into a position where we didn’t think we would be fighting again for a lead and for a victory.

“If we didn’t have the hiccup in the beginning, I think we could have even gone for a very good overall result, but that’s racing, I guess.  It’s only a good reason to come back next year.”

The “hiccup” the Dutchman referenced came during the race’s opening safety car, when Niederhauser’s No. 10 Porsche was the only car not to pit under caution.

“We had a bit of a miscommunication on the first option to go in with a safety car, which basically gave the others all, everyone except ourselves, a free pit stop,” Hartog added.

“This was absolutely not planned, and this really gave us problems. But if you look at the stint averages, me and Patric and Antares would have been able to fight for top three overall, which is incredible at this venue.”

The early strategic mishap resulted in the No. 10 Porsche going two laps down, regaining the one of those laps with a wave-by and later taking advantage of the timing of another safety car to get back on the lead lap in Pro-Am.

The battle for the class victory saw a high rate of attrition throughout, with the No. 32 GMG Racing Porsche (steering issues) and No. 75 SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo (rear axle failure) two of the most notable casualties.

Au, who sealed the IGTC’s Independent Cup title after adding his Indy success to previous triumph at the Nürburgring 24 and CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, hinted that the No. 10 car also battled with steering problems during the race.

“Sorry for the SunEnergy1 car, they drove well,” Au told Sportscar365.

“We had problems too. Our car was probably suffering from the same problem that other Porsches had.

“Turn 8 has a ginormous concrete block. If you hit it lap after lap for eight hours, it destroys a few things. That’s exactly what that is, because I think because I think quite a few cars got their toe links damaged.

“But who knows, I’m just speculating. All I know is, you know, the fact is our car had problems. The sister car had problems.”