WRT Captures Early Night Lead at 24H Spa

Team WRT’s Charles Weerts ran in first place in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa at one-quarter duration while fellow BMW squad ROWE Racing maintained the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup points lead.

Weerts, piloting the No. 32 BMW M4 GT3, moved ahead of Luca Engstler’s No. 17 Scherer Sport PHX Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II with a move around the outside at Bruxelles that he completed into the next left-hander.

While the overtake was for second place at the time, Weerts moved into the race lead when the off-sequence No. 98 ROWE Racing BMW of Nick Yelloly pitted.

Weerts held a 4.5-second lead over Engstler at the six-hour mark, while Raffaele Marciello ran third behind the wheel of the No. 88 Akkodis ASP Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.

Neil Verhagen held fourth aboard the No. 998 ROWE Racing BMW, with Julien Andlauer rounding out the top five in the No. 92 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R.

Andlauer led the race during the early darkness after overtaking Engstler’s No. 17 Audi at Bruxelles towards the end of the fifth hour.

The pass came after a lengthy lead battle that often saw the gap dip below a second as both cars navigated their way through traffic.

However, Andlauer lost the lead when he served a 30-second penalty for six track limit breaches, which handed the lead back to Engstler.

Ricardo Feller ran sixth in the No. 40 Audi Sport Tresor Orange 1 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II, ahead of the No. 71 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 in the hands of Davide Rigon.

Nick Yelloly ranked in the No. 98 ROWE Racing BMW, which kept the Endurance Cup lead after championship points were handed out at the six-hour mark.

The maximum of 12 points went to the WRT trio of Weerts, Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor, provisionally promoting them to seventh in the standings.

Garage 59’s No. 188 McLaren led Bronze Cup in twelfth overall, while the No. 99 Tresor Orange 1 Audi held the lead in Silver Cup.

The Gold and Pro-Am classes were led by the No. 9 Boutsen VDS Audi and No. 24 Car Collection Motorsport Porsche, respectively.