Indianapolis Post-Race Notebook

Photo: BMW

***BMW has become the first manufacturer to score a repeat victory in the Indianapolis 8 Hour presented by AWS, following the inaugural 2020 edition that saw a Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 take top honors with Nicky Catsburg, Connor De Philippi and Augusto Farfus at the wheel.

***It marked Philipp Eng’s second consecutive Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli win of the season after the Austrian’s victory in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa with ROWE Racing. Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor also become two-time winners on the season after their triumph in the Kyalami 9 Hour, also with Team WRT.

***Eng has closed the gap to Mercedes-AMG’s Jules Gounon in the drivers’ championship, with only eight points separating the top two drivers in the standings entering December’s season-ending Gulf 12 Hours in Abu Dhabi. Van der Linde and Vanthoor have moved ahead of Luca Stolz and Raffaele Marciello in the standings, meanwhile.

***BMW continues to hold a nine-point lead over Mercedes-AMG in the IGTC manufacturers’ championship after both German brands scored 33 points on Saturday. This was due to the globe-trotting GT3 series’ manufacturer points structure taking the top two nominated cars from each registered manufacturer, and making the non-registered cars in the finishing order invisible in terms of points.

***Mercedes-AMG “limited the damage” by scoring “valuable points” for the IGTC manufacturers’ championship according to its head of Customer Racing Stefan Wendl. “I’m quite happy afterwards, even if the race was not so exciting for us,” he told Sportscar365.

***The only jeopardy for Mercedes-AMG came in the final hour when the second-placed Craft-Bamboo car incurred a broken splitter. “There was no contact, so maybe it was a curb or something,” team director Darryl O’Young told Sportscar365. “It was vibrating but then it broke properly, the mounts, so then it just stayed after that. It didn’t vibrate anymore and that stabilized it in a way and Lello drove like Lello.”

***There was no instruction for Marciello to drop his pace to save the splitter. “At that point, it was push because GruppeM was not backing out, so we had to push to maintain it and he did a great job to keep the gap,” said O’Young. “It was a mega drive by him, but all three drivers did well.”

***Team WRT won its first race on American soil after coming close in the past, taking its first stop in victory lane as a result. The Belgian squad finished second in the 2018 California 8 Hour and third in two Rolex 24 at Daytona editions with Audi.

***WRT team principal Vincent Vosse told Sportscar365: “We have been close in WEC and close at Laguna Seca and Daytona. So to be here on the first step of the podium is a great feeling.”

***Vanthoor, Eng and van der Linde established a new distance record for the Indy 8 Hour, completing 332 laps or 809.748 miles (1,303.166 km). The previous record-holder, Mercedes-AMG Team Craft-Bamboo Racing, did 328 laps or 799.99 miles last year.

***Huber Motorsport’s Antares Au ended up as the highest-placed driver in the IGTC Independent Cup, finishing second in Pro-Am alongside Alfred Renauer and pole-sitter Laurin Heinrich who took the end of the race. Au has closed to nine points of championship leader Jonathan Hui, with Grove Racing’s Stephen Grove in third with one round to go.

***Renauer reflected on a rare pole position start for him aboard Huber Motorsport’s Pro-Am Porsche: “There are fast guys in this series. I struggled a bit with my rear tires, especially on braking. In the next stint, I dealt with that, but I lost some positions. It was not perfect, but in the end we finished second.”

***The No. 53 MDK Motorsports Porsche overcame a differential issue late in the running to finish third in the Fanatec GT Pro class, completing an all-Porsche podium behind the class championship-winning No. 28 RS1 entry and the No. 45 Wright Motorsports Porsche that took top category honors despite making a late-race stop for a right-front puncture.

***TR3 Racing scored a surprise Pro-Am class podium finish with Kenton Koch, who turned his first laps in a GT3 car around Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the race. Koch was called in to replace Paul Kiebler on race day morning, with the No. 27 Mercedes-AMG overcoming early race transponder issues and a subsequent drive-through penalty due to a pit stop violation while changing the unit.

***Koch had his view on Augusto Farfus’ comments about driving standards from backmarkers that referenced the TR3 driver. “We’re in a battle of our own as well,” Koch told Sportscar365. “I gave him the lane when I was able to. I was blocking because I only had one opportunity to get by the guy in front of me. He wanted to get by me in places that were going to be less ideal for me, so I made him wait just a little bit longer.”

***Bill Auberlen’s undefeated record at the Indy 8 Hour came to an end on Saturday, with refueling-related issues affecting the No. 94 BimmerWorld BMW in the second half. Auberlen and co-drivers Chandler Hull and Robby Foley were one of only three retirements in the race, having dropped out of the race in the final hour.

***A handful of other teams also battled refueling issues in the race, including the No. 120 Wright Motorsports Porsche and No. 38 ST Racing BMW.

***ST Racing’s refueling issue was that it couldn’t pump enough fuel into the car fast enough, so it lost ground by exceeding the minimum refueling connection time. “One time we lost 20 seconds; another time we lost 13 seconds,” BMW factory driver Neil Verhagen told Sportscar365. “In only getting those, we had almost half tanks in, so we couldn’t do full stints.”

***The problems for ST occurred at two stops, according to Verhagen: “It happened twice in a row. We thought we had it fixed and it happened again. Then we completely disassembled the entire system. I don’t know if they found something, but then it was working again fine.”

***The two DXDT Racing Mercedes-AMGs were the other two cars that failed to take the checkered flag, with the No. 91 entry having stopped on track in the second hour to bring out the race’s only full-course caution. The No. 08 car, meanwhile, had right-rear suspension failure.

***Conquest Racing’s Ferrari 296 GT3 was the first car to hit trouble in the opening hour, also with suspension damage that took the Prancing Horse behind the wall for repairs. It finished 19th, one position behind the No. 33 Triarsi Competizione Ferrari that sustained damage from Augusto Farfus’ contact with Onofrio Triarsi with two hours and 22 minutes to go.

***A left-rear tire cut caused by debris contributed to Wright Motorsports’ No. 120 Porsche falling out of the Pro-Am title fight. Technical director Bobby Viglione told Sportscar365: “We had to do an extra stop, because of the sequence of timing on the stint length. We could be semi-competitive, but we didn’t have the pace to overcome this.”

***The No. 120 Porsche also had a refueling issue at one stop. “We didn’t get the car completely full,” said Viglione. “We only needed 102-ish [liters] to do a stint and the capacity is 116, so over two stops we could have made that back up. The cut tire put us completely out of the running.”

***Wright requested to change from a Type-992 Porsche to a Type 991.2 after qualifying because of a missing replacement part that was “something to do with the sway bar,” according to Viglione. “We didn’t think we were going to get a part to replace it. That’s why we were going to switch.” The required part then showed up just in time for Wright to race with the newer Type-992.

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report

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