They completed a third victory for the German team after its 2016 and ’20 wins with BMW and Porsche respectively in the double-points round of the GT World Challenge Europe by 11.1s over the second-placed Auto Sport Promotion Mercedes shared by Raffaele Marciello, Jules Gounon and Timur Boguslavskiy.
The winning BMW M4 GT4, which started from down in 26th position after missing out on a spot in the Superpole qualifying session, came out on top in a four-hour run to the flag from the last of nine safety cars to interrupt the third Endurance Cup round of the 2023 GTWCE campaign..
Yelloly was running at the front on a different fuel strategy to the chasing pack when the race was neutralised with a Full Course Yellow, the Rowe car maintaining its lead through the pitstops and the safety car that followed.
Wittmann was able to edge away from the Scherer Sport PHX Audi with Kelvin van der Linde at the wheel after the race went green.
He pulled more than 12s before the next round of pitstops began to put one hand on the trophy of the 75th anniversary running of the Spa enduro.
Marciello took up the chase of the BMW after the stops before he handed the lead ASP Mercedes-AMG GT3 over to Gounon, who was unable to make inroads into the BMW’s advantage.
Gounon, who won the Spa GTWCE fixture last year with Marciello and Daniel Juncadella, came under pressure from Nicki Thiim in the Scherer Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II in the penultimate hour.
That allowed Eng to further extend the Rowe BMW’s advantage to more than 20s.
Eng, who became a three-time Spa winner after his previous triumph with Rowe in 2016 and his victory with Walkenhorst Motorsport in 2018, said: “It was such a rollercoaster, but we never give up in the chase of our dream, which is victory in the best GT3 race in the world.”
Gounon put some daylight between himself and the Audi prior to the final pitstops, only to face a renewed challenge from Thiim.
Source: Autosport