ROWE Takes Commanding Endurance Cup 1-2 at Monza

ROWE Racing claimed a one-two at the 3 Hours of Monza and delivered BMW’s first Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup victory in five years.

Philipp Eng, Marco Wittmann and Nick Yelloly led from start to finish in their pole-sitting No. 98 BMW M4 GT3 and beat teammates Dan Harper, Neil Verhagen and Max Hesse by 13.5 seconds.

ROWE initially looked set to finish first and third in a BMW 1-2-3 result until Dries Vanthoor pitted the No. 32 Team WRT car with an issue on its left-front Pirelli tire.

That promoted the No. 63 Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of Jordan Pepper, Andrea Caldarelli and Mirko Bortolotti to third, with Bortolotti narrowly holding off Sainteloc Junior Team Audi driver Patric Niederhauser at the end to seal a podium.

Despite missing out on a top-three sweep, Sunday’s race yielded the first win for the BMW M4 GT3 in GTWC Europe Endurance Cup and brought the Munich-based manufacturer to the top step of the series podium since the 2018 CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.

Eng took charge of Sunday’s season-opener from pole position and held off Valentino Rossi into the first chicane, while Maro Engel charged Mercedes-AMG Team Al Manar Racing from ninth to third, moving ahead of van der Linde and Harper in the process.

The opening hour was impacted by two safety car periods. The first was for an accident at the start when GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG driver Florian Scholze tangled with Samantha Tan’s Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020, causing both to crash into the barriers.

Another interruption occurred after 20 minutes when Iron Lynx driver Rolf Ineichen went off-line to avoid an Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II that missed its braking point into the Rettifilio chicane, which caught out Lorenzo Patrese and Kay van Berlo.

Engel found a way past Rossi at the second restart half an hour in, but the former MotoGP star kept pace with the leaders and even set the fastest lap of the stint.

However, Rossi’s hopes of a maiden GTWC Europe podium unraveled when he ran too deep at Rettifilio and his BMW became stuck in neutral, costing 12 positions.

The No. 46 car retired shortly after that when Augusto Farfus encountered a left-rear puncture at the start of his turn.

WRT’s other Pro-class BMW was having a better afternoon, however, as Weerts rose to second when GetSpeed Performance had a slow pit stop for its Al Manar-badged car.

Weerts initially got to within a second of Wittmann, but the two-time DTM champion managed the backmarker traffic well to produce a five-second advantage.

Verhagen ran third in the middle stint for ROWE, ahead of the Lamborghinis of K-PAX Racing driver Sandy Mitchell and Caldarelli.

Mercedes-AMG’s hopes of recovering to the podium were dashed when Al Manar Racing incurred front-end damage after an altercation with Akkodis ASP’s Timur Boguslavskiy and Tresor Orange 1 Audi driver Dennis Marschall.

A few minutes later, Boguslavskiy picked up damage to his Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo when he moved across to defend from Christopher Mies exiting the Roggia chicane, which ended the race of Endurance Cup champions Jules Gounon and Raffaele Marciello.

Drama also befell K-PAX, as the American squad dropped behind Iron Lynx with Mitchell managing a suspension issue that manifested after the second stop.

Despite the drama going on behind, the BMWs continued unabated at the head of the field and Yelloly emerged from the pits with three seconds in hand to Vanthoor.

The gap came down slightly, but Yelloly remained in control of affairs. His lead suddenly increased when Vanthoor made an unscheduled stop for a new left-front tire, ensuring a one-two result for ROWE.

Vanthoor ended up finishing six, while Tresor Orange 1 completed the top five.

The best of the AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3s came through in eighth.

Comtoyou Takes Class Wins on Series Debut

Seventh place overall went to the Gold Cup-winning Audi of Max Hofer, Nicolas Baert and Maxime Soulet who claimed a series debut win for TCR team Comtoyou Racing.

Comtoyou battled with the No. 30 WRT BMW for much of the race, before drawing clear after the final round of pit stops.

WRT instead fell into a duel with Optimum Motorsport’s McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, which took second after a Dean MacDonald move on Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer.

Comtoyou also triumphed in Silver Cup with Loris Hezemans, Sam Dejonghe and Finlay Hutchison.

Top honors in the new Bronze Cup class went to the Pure Rxcing Porsche crew of Klaus Bachler, Joel Sturm and Alex Malykhin.

Bachler narrowly beat Sky-Tempesta Racing’s Eddie Cheever, who in turn held off the Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW of James Kell at the line.

Barwell Motorsport prevailed in Pro-Am after moving past long-time leader BMW Italia Ceccato Racing, which lost time when it was spun by the No. 52 AF Corse Ferrari.

RESULTS: 3H Monza