With all three GT3 contenders going into this afternoon’s restart on the lead lap, the Haegeli by T2 Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R made a demon start to immediately take the overall lead ahead of the MiddleCap racing with Scuderia Praha Ferrari 488 GT3, the pair continuing their battle for position across the next few laps.
An early pit stop though for the Leipert Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo (#10, Brendon Leitch / Tyler Cooke / Fidel Leib / Seb Morris), plus mixed strategies for both the Porsche and the Ferrari, meant the lead continued to swap between all three contenders throughout the afternoon.
The die was cast during the final Code 60 though with a perfectly-timed pit stop from Haegeli by T2 Racing heading into the final hour, a call that ultimately secured the German team’s first 24H SERIES win in only its second 24H SERIES outing.
The competition was so tight that Marc Basseng collected the chequered at the end of 384 laps of the 4.574km Hockenheimring just 53 seconds ahead of a hard-charging Josef Král.
“It’s absolutely unbelievable,” Marc Basseng explained. “It’s our second race with this team and the new car, and now we’ve won! It was really hard, a big challenge, but our strategy was absolutely perfect and we made no mistakes. We had a little bit of luck as well, but in the end that’s what you need to win a race like this.”
Despite losing time during its penultimate stop for fuel, Leipert Motorsport completed a superb run to finish 3rd on the German team’s first GT3 outing since 2017.
Less than one lap back, the CP Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 (#85, Charles Putman / Charles Espenlaub / Joe Foster / Shane Lewis), which had been running 3rd in the closing stages, was forced to make a final splash-and-dash for fuel just two laps from home. The American team held on to finish a strong 4th.
Audi R8 LMS GT3s finished 5th, 6th and 7th on the road as Rutronik Racing by TECE (#18, Michael Doppelmayr / Pierre Kaffer / Elia Erhart / Swen Herberger) led home both the #34 (Gustav Edelhof / Elmar Grimm / Max Edelhoff) and the #88 (Pierre-Yves Paque / Martin Lechmann / Vincent Piemonte / Christian Kranenberg) Car Collection Motorsport entries. The latter had a difficult start to the day with two spins early on, one of which was on the way to the grid.
Bas Koeten Racing took an impressive 1-2 finish in the 991 class, the Dutch team’s solo-entered Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (#925, Marcel van Berlo / Glenn van Berlo / Bart van Helden) leading home the ‘sister’ NKPP Racing by Bas Koeten Racing Cup car (#991, Harry Hilders / Gijs Bessem / Bas Barenbrug) after a metronimic run.
Willi Motorsport by Ebimotors (#955, Fabrizio Broggi / Sergiu Nicolae / Sabino de Castro) had been on-course to finish 3rd, but a long pit stop on the cusp of the final hour opened the door for DUWO Racing (#909, Andrey Mukovoz / Stanislav Sidoruk / Sergey Peregudov) to secure the final rostrum spot almost within sight of the flag.
The result means DUWO Racing now leads the Overall GT Teams’ standings with 69 points.
