Two classic 24-hour races in one week: that’s Augusto Farfus’ current schedule. His endurance marathon began at the weekend with the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. Next weekend, the 24-hour race at the legendary Nürburgring-Nordschleife in Germany will follow.
At Le Mans, BMW works driver Farfus was in action in the #82 BMW M8 GTE of BMW Team MTEK, sharing the cockpit with António Félix da Costa and Jesse Krohn. Le Mans was the final race of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) ‘Super Season’ that started at Spa in May 2018 and included two editions of the Le Mans classic. It also marked the end of BMW’s WEC programme.
Under the given circumstances, it was already clear before the race that Le Mans would not be an easy task and it happened as expected. In qualifying, Farfus set a strong lap time to secure fifth on the grid in the LM GTE Pro class. Over the course of the race, the #82 trio, however, could not hold that position and dropped back. Farfus and his team-mates had to drive to the limit and the strain on the car was high, resulting in technical issues that cost additional time. But the entire team gave everything to bring the #82 BMW M8 GTE home in 11th position.
“It was disappointing”, Farfus admitted. “We wanted to finish this on a high but we did not have the pace. Over the entire race, we tried everything to keep up with the leaders but we’ve seen that we did not have the pace. In addition, we had a failure in the night although that didn’t really influence the overall result. But it was fun. I enjoyed racing in the WEC and being a part of the BMW M8 GTE project from the beginning. We worked very well together, BMW Team MTEK did a fantastic job. I have to thank every single member of the team. It’s a shame that we could not get a big trophy here in WEC but we have to take the positives and move on. And the good thing is that already next week we have the Nürburgring 24 Hours to make up. So let’s turn the page and next week we are back on track again.”
It’s no time to rest now for Farfus as he will head to the next endurance classic, the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring-Nordschleife next weekend. Farfus has won this iconic race in 2010 with BMW Team Schnitzer and will compete with the squad again this year, sharing the BMW M6 GT3 with Martin Tomczyk, Timo Scheider and Sheldon van der Linde.
