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Spa 24: #99 Rowe BMW leads at six hours

A well-timed Full Course Yellow and some lapped traffic has helped the #99 Rowe BMW M6 to a comfortable lead a quarter of the way into the 24 Hours of Spa.

#99 Rowe Racing, BMW M6 GT3: Maxime Martin, Philipp Eng, Alexander Sims

#99 Rowe Racing, BMW M6 GT3: Maxime Martin, Philipp Eng, Alexander Sims

Marc Fleury

Start of the race, #28 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT, Audi R8 LMS: Nico Müller, René Rast, Laurens Vanthoor leads
Start of the race
#22 Nissan GT Academy Team RJN, Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3: Matthew Simmons, Romain Sarazin, Sean Walkinshaw, Riccardo Sanchez
#86 AMG-Team HTP Motorsport, Mercedes-AMG GT3: Maximilian Götz, Thomas Jäger, Gary Paffett
#74 ISR, Audi R8 LMS: Philippe Giauque, Henry Hassid, Nicolas Lapierre, Franck Perera
Atmosphere in pitlane
#28 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT, Audi R8 LMS: Nico Müller, René Rast, Laurens Vanthoor

The #99 M6 GT3 first took over the lead on Lap 102, but it was a Full Course Yellow thanks to the #15 BMW going off at Radillon around the five-hour mark that put the Rowe Racing entry into such a commanding position.

Not only did the FCY, and subsequent Safety Car, fall perfectly for the team’s strategy, but it also put a number of lapped cars between Alex Sims – who took over the #99 from Maxime Martin – and the second-placed #6 Audi.

That allowed Sims to quickly build a gap of more than 20 seconds when the race went green again, which then grew out to 28 seconds by the six hour mark.

The #6 Phoenix Audi still sits second with Christopher Mies as the wheel, ahead of the #1 WRT Audi of Will Stevens. The #19 GRT Grasser Lamborghini is fourth, with the #4 WRT Audi fifth.

Fifth place had been held by the #28 WRT Audi, but the team’s chances took a massive hit when Rast and Jonathan Hirschi in the #114 Emil Frey Jaguar made contact on the first lap after the final restart. The clash left Rast’s car with left-rear damage significant enough to send him back to the pits and into the garage.

The leading Pro-Am car is currently the #44 Oman Racing Aston Martin, while the #49 Kaspersky Ferrari leads the Am class.

The first quarter of the race featured a 75-minute Safety Car session, which started when Kevin Estre and Molokai Ishikawa got together at the exit of Eau Rouge as Estre was coming out of the pits. The impact fired both cars into the barrier, leading to a lengthy delay as safety crews repaired the guard railing and ruling both cars out on the spot.

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