Having seen the chequered flag with all three cars at the highlight of the Blancpain-GT-Series, the 24 hours of Spa-Francorchamps, GRT team principal Gottfried Grasser nevertheless expressed mixed feelings on the outcome: “To be part of this race always has been a childhood dream for me. Now for the second time we put this project into reality. First row on the grid, than even leading the race for a few hours – and then so many things happened that in the end we could not really finish up front”. P11, P15 and P42 were the final results, “even if we did the race without any bigger mistakes, with perfect pitstops, without any spins, and at least with two cars without any contact. This is normally a really great performance.  But nevertheless we ended up four laps behind, because we always seemed to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. It looked like it just was not meant to be…”!

After the six Mercedes cars originally taking the first six positions on the grid being disqualified and some other cars receiving penalties Mirko Bortolotti in the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 number 16 finally started from the front row, ”and together with René Rast in the Audi I managed to create a slight gap to the rest of the field”. After a first Yellow Bortolotti even was able to trick his rival at the re-start and to take the lead for nearly two hours. “But then our bad lick began when we come in for a pitstop under Full Course Yellow. Suddenly, the FCY was turned into a safety-car period – and so we lost one lap during the stop. With our performance in general I was really happy, but there were some other similar situations which took a better result than P11 away from us. At least we are best of the Lamborghini squad, but his is only a weak consolation”. Grasser specifically said thank you to his team: “The guys worked day and night to make everything working perfectly. They deserve a big round of applause. Even with a top result having slipped away from us, it was a great experience. I am looking forward to the future and hope that then in key moments we might be a bit luckier than this time”.

For Rolf Ineichen it was a weekend with many ups and downs. In Qualifying we showed a very strong performance, the Team gave a perfect car to Mirko for the Superpole and he did the perfect lap. We expected a lot from the race and it is not so easy to find the reasons why things did not go our way in the end. There was a lot of bad luck involved as well, there where also a few fifty-fifty situations about what to do, due to the weather, due to FCY – and we took the wrong decisions. This went on until the very end. The last downpour started when Mirko had just passes the pitlane entrance, so he had to do another full lap on slicks which cost us the Top Ten finish which already seemed to be secured”. Jeroen Bleekemolen stated “that it was not easy to match the speed of the top cars, but we gave it all. But the bad luck with the safety-car, a drive through and a blown tyre played an important role in the fact that we dropped a little bit back. P11 is not bad, but also really what we had hoped for. On the other hand we can really be proud of not having made any mistakes at all as a team”.

The young driver line-up of the Lamborghini Huracán number 19 showed an impressive performance. Starting P41 after a difficult qualifying they quickly made their way through the field, keeping fourth place for some time after six hours. “During the night we dropped back slightly, although the car and the performance were actually quite good. But we lost quite a bit under FCY, as these periods usually came exactly in the wrong moments for our strategy”, Luca Stolz, who like his teammate Michele Beretta drove his first 24 hour race, was a bit upset. “But a Top 15 result is not too bad for the first time. But next year I want to finish within the Top Ten”. Beretta was content as well, “even if we maybe deserved a little bit more. But as a team we are really proud of having finished with all three cars. And next time for sure we will be fighting for absolute top positions”. Fellow countryman Andrea Piccini regretted the tyre problem “which cost us two laps and even dropped us out of the Top 20 for some time. It´s difficult to make up for something like this. Also during the changeable weather conditions with some rain showers we not always took the right decisions. To Ten would have been possible. But for our young team with Luca and Michele doing their first 24 hour race it was still a good result”.  

The ProAM car number 63 was hit by a lot or bad luck already early in the race: “Due to an accident which was not our fault at all we soon lost a lot of ground, after three hours we spent a lot of time in the garage. And once you are so far behind, it is really difficult to recover”, said a rather disappointed Nicolas Pohler after finishing 42nd in the general classification. “It was a rather hard weekend, we seemed to be followed by misfortunes all the time.” One or the other penalty also added to the problems, mainly for not respecting track limits, a subject that in general caused lots of discussions over the whole Spa weekend. Diego Alessi, racing for GRT for the first time, was not unhappy about his debut, “but I think I will need a bit more time to really get used to the Lamborghini. During the race I already realized how I got better with every stint…”!

“Seeing the chequered flag with all three for sure is a positive thing”, was Grasser´s final conclusion. “I don´t think too many teams managed to do this.  Reaching first row on the grid and leading the race were really touching moments, but of course it hurts that the final outcome was not what it could have been, even with us not having made real mistakes. Especially considering the enormous effort that´s needed for this race.  This is not an easy season for us, although we improved a lot on all kind of tracks. We always do our best – but it is just not meant to be. But we are already looking ahead, set up the cars again and go to Nürburgring for the ADAC-GT-Masters, where we will take part with two cars the coming weekend. We are already looking forward to it”!