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FIA GT World Cup

Muecke Stripped of Macau Victory; Engel Wins

Maro Engel promoted to race winner in Macau…

Photo: FIA

Photo: FIA

A 10-second post-race penalty for Stefan Muecke has dropped the original FIA GT World Cup Qualification Race winner to third place.

The stewards of the meeting investigated the restart during the race and concluded that the Craft Bamboo driver braked before the restart, which resulted in Maro Engel having to take avoiding action.

The subsequent penalty means that Mercedes AMG Driving Academy driver Maro Engel was promoted to winner. The German will also tomorrow’s FIA GT World Cup race from pole position.

“Of course, winning a race on the track is more emotional than afterwards by a decision from the stewards,” Engel said, after hearing about the stewards’ decision.

“After we were anything but fortunate in yesterday’s qualifying, I am now particularly happy for our mechanics and engineers. They prepared the cars in a perfect way again overnight and today’s result wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for them.”

“It is not the way we wanted to get pole and Stefan did a really nice race with no mistakes apart from that one but the rules are quite clear: for safety reasons when there is a restart the leader obviously decides to speed, and as soon he decides to go to full power, he must maintain it and can no longer brake and reduce the speed because it’s extremely dangerous.”

“Stefan went, I went with him, Edoardo as well behind me, and after we almost reach 200 KPH Stefan smashed the brakes and it was a real surprise. I managed to brake earlier and avoid a bit to the right. Behind me I was really scared they would not be able to avoid and luckily there was no big crash.”

Edoardo Mortara will now line up on the first row as well, with Muecke joining Renger van der Zande on row two.

René de Boer contributed to this report.

Marcel ten Caat (@marceltencaat) is a contributor to Sportscar365 and other publications including Autosport.nl.

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