Van der Linde Explains Suzuka 1000km’s “Defining Moment”

Kelvin van der Linde has revealed the “defining moment” when Team WRT thought it had lost the Suzuka 1000km, as the BMW squad ultimately came through for a commanding win in Sunday’s Intercontinental GT Challenge fixture.

Along with his co-drivers in the No. 32 BMW M4 GT3 EVO, Raffaele Marciello and Charles Weerts, van der Linde was part of the crew that controlled the fourth round of the IGTC season for most of the distance, triumphing by 13 seconds.

However, there was one point of the race where the strategic advantage appeared to lie with the No. 7 Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R that finished second.

This came when the fifth Full Course Yellow of the race, which morphed into the second safety car period late in the fourth hour of the six-and-a-half hour race, as the Absolute crew made a full-service stop while the No. 32 BMW only took tires while changing over from Weerts to Marciello.

This kept the BMW ahead of the road, but another full-course yellow and safety car followed not long after that reset the field heading into the final part of the race.

“It was tricky,” van der Linde told Sportscar365. “At one point we thought we lost the race when the Porsche refuelled. It was about two or three hours to go.

“We didn’t take fuel on that stop and we very much needed a Full Course Yellow to come our way again, otherwise it would have looked pretty difficult to win the race.

“We didn’t take fuel when Lello jumped in, and that was kind of a defining moment because we thought we kind of made a mistake on strategy. But nonetheless, the FCY came in the end and we were able to get ourselves back into the race.”

Once the strategies were reset, and van der Linde got back in the car, the BMW driver was able to ease away from the NewMan-liveried Absolute Porsche of Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Patrick Pilet, over the course of the final two stints.

“It’s never easy when you’re behind a Porsche with that driver lineup,” said Marciello.

“We were pushing quite hard. For sure you can not do pretty lap times because you need also to save the tires, because tire deg was quite important.

“In my stint, I was very quick because we only took tires, not fuel. It faked a bit of the lap times but we were pretty close with the Porsche with a nice battle.”

Van der Linde Hails BMW’s “Unreal” IGTC Commitment

Van der Linde heaped praise on BMW for the effort it has made in pursuit of the IGTC title, as it was the only one of the series’ four registered manufacturers to come to Japan with a European-based team, as opposed to Asian customers.

The South African believes the Bavarian marque’s “consistent” approach in relying on WRT for all rounds except the Nürburgring 24, where he was part of the race-winning ROWE Racing effort, has been key to the brand’s success.

“I think it’s great to see the effort BMW has brought this year to all the races, bringing a proper factory lineup,” said van der Linde.

“That’s been the key to success in all the big races for us, especially coming here to Suzuka, coming with two strong lineups and two very strong cars. The commitment has been unreal this year so that’s the reward for it.”

Victory at Suzuka means that van der Linde heads into next month’s Indianapolis 8 Hour IGTC season finale with a five-point advantage over Marciello.

The points differential between the pair comes from the fact that the two drivers were in different entries for the Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour in February, with van der Linde in the winning car, as well as at the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.

“It’s cool,” van der Linde said of his championship position. “I’ve never gone for the championship in IGTC so it’s obviously cool to be in the running, but I think there’s so many of my teammates that have obviously have been part the journey.

“We need to see how we mix things up [with driver lineups] for Indy, but I would find it a bit unfortunate to win this championship alone because I’ve been helped a lot by some other guys. Obviously it’s still open.”

John Dagys contributed to this report