Yelloly: ROWE’s Victory Hopes Came ‘Early Sunday Morning’

Nick Yelloly said ROWE Racing began to believe in a positive outcome to the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa on Sunday morning after the team recovered from a one-lap deficit.

Yelloly, Marco Wittmann and Philipp Eng secured the first major 24-hour race victory for the BMW M4 GT3 in this weekend’s Belgian endurance classic.

The win came after a troubled early phase race that saw the No. 98 car start outside of the top 20 and then lose a lap to the leaders due to refueling issues.

While the team eventually managed to return to the lead lap and began making progress overnight, Yelloly said it wasn’t until Sunday morning that the team started to believe in a positive outcome.

“I think probably early hours in the morning, maybe towards ten o’clock,” he told Sportscar365.

“We went off strategy and we managed to gain five seconds back with a short full-course yellow. That started just to bring back and added to our pace.

“Our pace actually increased at time as well. At that time, we kind of knew we would potentially be in a potential of a podium.

“The win is a different thing because there are so many strong cars and obviously things have to fall your way.”

Team principal Hans-Peter Naundorf explained that the team dealt with two separate problems related to refueling early in the race, but that it was the second one that was more costly.

“We had just one of our refueling guys that had an issue,” he said.

“He couldn’t really connect it properly so that the flow was at the best rate and we just got only 30 percent of the fuel inside. We had to short-cut the stint and this was us then dropping back a lap.”

Philipp Eng, who secured a third overall win in the race, admitted that the setback caused frustration in the ROWE camp.

“At one point in this race I almost wanted to throw my telephone in the corner,” he said. “If you are a lap down here it’s very difficult to gain it back,” he said.

“But we were clever with a full course yellow and safety car situation. And that’s how we got back in convention.”

As a result of the earlier setbacks, the No. 98 BMW ended up running off-sequence from the other Pro class entries for a not insignificant part of the race.

“I think it was a good call,” Yelloly said about the decision to pit under caution.

“I don’t think we obviously gained what we wanted but I think we gained, from what I understand, five seconds.

“So, having had the track limits penalty of 30 seconds as well, we really needed to make it or get everything that we could at every opportunity.”

Roughly an hour later, the safety car made its final appearance of the race when Walkenhorst Motorsport driver Bailey Voisin stopped on track.

This time, differing strategies converted as all major Pro-class contenders pitted and ROWE took the restart in the lead of the race with Wittmann behind the wheel.

“That fell our way very well,” Yelloly said.

“I think if we hadn’t gone safety car at the time, from my understanding, we had good drive and good fuel, so, the race could have been better or easier for us.

“But with that full course yellow and safety car, it bunched the pack back up. Marco did a great job to pull away, of course and then, Philipp ended up finishing it off for us.”