ROWE RACING had two reasons for joy: in its Blancpain Endurance Series (BES) debut, the team from Worms in Germany showed a convincing performance with seventh (#99) and tenth (#98) place in the Pro-class. Thus, ROWE RACING’s two competition gullwings also were the best-placed SLS AMG GT3s in the field.
The best weather conditions saw a top-class three-hour race with a total of 58 participating teams, in which the two ROWE RACING pairings put in consistently strong performances: the #99 SLS AMG GT3 with drivers Stef Dusseldorp (NED), Klaus Graf and Nico Bastian (both GER) started from 17th place and defended that position in the first part of the race. After a time penalty, Dusseldorp handed over to Graf, who subsequently gave the #99 gullwing to Bastian in 15th place.
The #98 ASTANA by ROWE RACING SLS AMG GT3, driven by Daniel Juncadella (ESP), Indy Dontje (NED) and Nicolai Sylvest (DEN) ended up 16th in qualifying. Starting driver Juncadella made up some positions in the race straight away. After one hour, on lap 35, the Spaniard handed over the car to team-mate Dontje, who, just like Juncadella and Sylvest, made his debut for ROWE RACING at Monza.
With 45 minutes remaining, the field came together again during a ten minutes’ safety car intervention following an accident. This resulted into a thrilling finale, in which especially the #99 SLS AMG GT3 was able to make up some positions. In the end, final driver Bastian crossed the finish line in seventh place (eleventh place overall). The sister car (#98) with Sylvest behind the wheel managed to hold on to its position in the final stages and finished tenth (15th place overall).
ROWE RACING team principal, Hans-Peter Naundorf: “We had an excellent debut in the BES with seventh and tenth place. We achieved the best result of the eight SLS AMG GT3 that were in the field, which shows that we are well sorted. I am very happy with the performance of our drivers. The young drivers did an excellent job on their debut as well. We want to build on that in the next round at Silverstone.”
The next BES round takes place at Silverstone on Sunday, 24 May, 2015. In this race, ROWE RACING will again be competing with two SLS AMG GT3s.