BMW’s Marciello, Vanthoor Lament Macau Defeats

Photo: BMW

Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor have spoken out following separate incidents that took them out of potential victory in the FIA GT World Cup in Macau.

BMW teammates Marciello and Vanthoor, who finished 1-2 in the Qualifying Race on Saturday and shared the front row for the title-decider, both failed to finish Sunday’s Main Race on the rain-soaked Guia Circuit

While Vanthoor dropped out of the race after contact from the eventual race-winning No. 130 GruppeM Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Maro Engel, Marciello got tangled up in a dramatic duel with Ferrari’s Antonio Fuoco for the lead with two laps to go.

Fuoco snatched the lead from Marciello before the two ended up in the run-off area, handing the win to Engel.

“It’s a shame how the main race went,” said Marciello. “Unfortunately, we had the worst conditions for our car today, but we were only two laps away from victory.

“I lost the lead in the last corner against the Ferrari, but tried to counter immediately.

“Of course, I was late, but he also changed line under braking, and then I had no more space. I put everything on one card, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out today.”

Maricello ended his bid to become a three-time consecutive GT World Cup champion in the pit lane after the incident with Fuoco.

Vanthoor, meanwhile, was left questioning the severity of Engel’s five-second post-race penalty for the contact that took the Belgian out of the race early on.

“If you push another car off, you should not be able to win the race,” said Vanthoor. “For me it is a no-go what happened today – but it is what it is, it happened.

“We had good fun and showed that BMW is competitive and showed a good fight, but unfortunately, there are some things out of our control.”

BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos was left with mixed emotions, with Augusto Farfus and Sheldon van der Linde capitalizing on the carnage to claim podium finishes, yet its two leading contenders not finishing the race.

“In the main race, it became clear that our car was not the fastest and we fell back,” said Roos. “Unfortunately, there was also an incident between Maro Engel and Dries Vanthoor, which in our view was not appropriately penalized, resulting in Dries’ race ending prematurely while he was in third place.

“Of course, it’s a great result to have two cars on the podium with Augusto Farfus and Sheldon van der Linde. But when you compete here, you want to win the race.

“And I believe we had arguably the strongest lineup, but not the chance to win.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John