ROWE RACING is approaching the season finale of the GT World Challenge Europe at Barcelona with “maximum attack“
St. Ingbert, 26th September 2023 – Maximum attack is the approach ROWE RACING is taking as it heads into the season finale of the GT World Challenge Europe at Barcelona next Sunday (1st October). The St. Ingbert team is concluding a magnificent season, having achieved a double victory at the season opener at Monza and securing their third overall triumph at the 24 Hours of Spa. They are now vying for the overall victory in the Endurance Cup for both the team and the drivers.
In the team standings, ROWE RACING is currently 15 points behind the leaders. This means that at the Circuit de Catalunya‑Barcelona, they must secure at least a third-place finish on the podium along with the additional point for the pole position, in order to bring the title to St. Ingbert for the first time, provided their competitors achieve a correspondingly worse result. In the driver standings, the Spa winners, Philipp Eng, Marco Wittmann and Nick Yelloly are trailing by 18 points. Therefore, the three BMW M works drivers need at least a second‑place finish to secure the overall victory.
The crew of the #98 BMW M4 GT3 has demonstrated their capability several times this season. Austrian driver Philipp Eng, two‑time German DTM champion Marco Wittmann and British driver Nick Yelloly convincingly secured pole position and victory at Monza and emerged as winners in the 24‑our classic at Spa. They also achieved a third‑place finish at Le Castellet. The BMW Junior Team, consisting of British driver Dan Harper, German Max Hesse and Neil Verhagen from USA in the sister car #998, has also reached the podium once.
For ROWE RACING, the fact that a BMW has never won on the Formula 1 track outside Barcelona is not a bad omen but an additional motivation. Especially since the structural changes in the final corner have made the 4.655‑kilometre‑long track slightly faster and more fluid, aligning with the characteristics of the BMW M4 GT3. The St. Ingbert team has also experienced the thrill of leading in Barcelona before. In 2019, the team secured its first‑ever pole position there in the most populous and prestigious racing series for GT3 cars in Europe. This year, 54 cars will compete, the highest number ever in this series at Barcelona.
The race weekend in Catalonia kicks off for the St. Ingbert team on Saturday (30th September) with free practice from 9:00 to 10:30 followed by the pre qualifying from 13:25 to 14:55 also lasting 90 minutes. On Sunday (1st October), the qualifying session from 9:45 to 10:45 will determine the start grid for the three‑hour race, which is scheduled to start at 15:00.
Hans-Peter Naundorf, Team Principal ROWE RACING: “Our approach for the season finale of the GT World Challenge Europe is quite simple: maximum attack. We are focused on doing the best job possible at Barcelona to engage in a tough battle for the overall titles in the Endurance Cup with our competitors, using every means at our disposal. The primary goal is to finish ahead of the #88 car and secure a spot on the podium. That is how we aim to exert the maximum pressure on the leaders. We take inspiration from our 2019 achievement of securing ROWE RACING’s first pole position in the European SRO series at Barcelona. Moreover, the new track layout with the smoother and faster final sector should be more suited to our BMW M4 GT3 compared to the layout with the chicane in the final corner from last year. We are looking forward to the thrilling showdown on Sunday.”
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