Black Falcon Takes Second Consecutive 24H COTA Win

Jeroen Bleekemolen, Ben Keating, Felipe Fraga and Cooper MacNeil gave Black Falcon its second consecutive 24H COTA victory at the weekend.

The crew’s Mercedes-AMG GT3 led going into the overnight intervention after 11 hours and controlled the rest of the 24H Series season final following the resumption.

It won by four laps from the Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R driven by two-time runners up Alfred Renauer, Robert Reanauer, Daniel Allemann and Ralf Bohn.

The Black Falcon Mercedes started from pole and entered the overnight break with a single-lap lead over the fellow Mercedes entered by rally team Toksport WRT.

The dominant win it went on to take marked its second straight triumph in the Texan enduro after it beat Herberth by a lap in the 2018 edition with a different driver lineup.

In third outright were Car Collection Motorsport’s Elmar Grimm, Ingo Volger, Max Edelhoff and Dr. Johannes Kirchoff in an Audi R8 LMS GT3.

This car engaged in an entertaining battle for the final spot on the overall podium with CP Racing’s all-American Mercedes driven by Shane Lewis, Charles Espenlaub, Joe Foster and Charles Putman.

The Audi came through to win by just over 30 seconds, beating the Mercedes in a result that also decided the A6 Am class victory.

Toksport WRT’s Mercedes, featuring Hendrik Still, Martin Konrad, Axcil Jefferies and AMG factory driver Luca Stolz, completed the top five finishers.

The ADAC GT Masters squad needed to recover from rear suspension damage in the second segment of the race which cost 20 minutes to its rivals.

Toksport’s Mercedes ultimately finished 11 laps down, a minute and 40 seconds ahead of the Park Place Motorsport-run and VOLT-entered Porsche of Trent Hindman, Jan Heylen, Richard Heistand and Alan Brynjolfsson.

Two class leads were overturned in the second 12-hour speel of running in the GT4 and 991-Cup categories.

In the former, two of the leading cars experienced overheating issues with one of those – the RHC Jorgensen/Strom BMW M4 GT4 – holding to win at the front of a podium sweep for the German manufacturer.

The leader at the interval was the ST Racing BMW but the overheating problem dropped it back to third in the class order.

RHC Jorgensen’s car, driven by Daren Jorgensen, Brett Strom, Danny van Dongen and Jon Miller, experienced similar issues but managed to stay ahead of the Sorg Rennsport BMW which came through in second.

In the former, French outfit Porsche Lorient Racing claimed the win after benefiting from a late mechanical issue for Kelly-Moss Motorsports.

A lengthy change of differential for the Kelly-Moss squad’s Porsche 991-II Cup resulted in its non-classification at the endd, behind both the Lorient car and MRS-GT Racing.

Victory in the TCR-based TCE class was the Red Camel-Jordans Cupra TCR of Ivo Breukers, Steven Liquorish, Jerimy Daniel and Jean-Francois Harvey which finished ninth overall.

RESULTS: 24H COTA