Hockenheim. The penultimate race of the season in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup at the Hockenheimring (GER) was the home event for ROWE Racing. The team from St. Ingbert (GER), around 150 kilometres from Hockenheim, showed fighting spirit after a disappointing qualifying session, putting the two BMW M4 GT3s into ninth and eleventh positions after great recovery performances in the three-hour race.
The BMW Junior Team with Dan Harper (GBR), Max Hesse (GER) and Neil Verhagen (USA) started the race from 22nd place in the #50 BMW M4 GT3 and worked their way gradually up to ninth position. In the #98 car, Nick Catsburg (NED), Augusto Farfus (BRA) and Nick Yelloly (GBR) improved by a total of 17 positions, moving up from 28th to eleventh place. In the virtual race in the Fanatec Esports GT Pro Series on Saturday evening, Harper represented the ROWE Racing team as he claimed sixth place. The season finale in the Endurance Cup takes place on 2nd October at Barcelona (ESP).
Reactions after the race:
Hans-Peter Naundorf (Team principal ROWE Racing): “After the way this weekend went, we have to be satisfied with a top ten finish, even though we had hoped for a different result in our home race. We recognised early on that our cars would not deliver the performance here that we were looking for. At least our engineers and drivers were able to work together to close those gaps somewhat for the race. However, starting from so far back meant that this one top ten spot was the best we could do, even with a performance as faultless as that at Spa-Francorchamps. Unfortunately, we are still quite a way off the top.”
Max Hesse (#50 BMW M4 GT3, ROWE Racing, 9th place): “It was a difficult weekend for us, but we made the best of it in the end and finished ninth to score two points. We had problems from the word go this weekend and we struggled to find a good balance. We still have a bit of work to before the next race in Barcelona. The ROWE Racing team did a super job here at Hockenheim, the pit stops were perfect and no-one on the team gave up. Thanks to everyone for that.“
Nick Catsburg (#98 BMW M4 GT3, ROWE Racing, 11th place): “It was a very difficult weekend for us. We kind of expected that this track would not really suit our car and unfortunately in qualifying that showed. In the race we managed to climb 17 places and got a relatively good result. That is always one of the strengths of ROWE Racing to have clean races, to be smart with the pit stops and to make no mistakes, but unfortunately we clearly did not have the speed.“