The weekend of the Nürburgring 24 Hours started pretty well for Augusto Farfus and his team mates in the number 18 Schubert Motorsport BMW M6 GT3, as the Brazilian qualified the car second on the grid, but sadly things didn’t go their way and so the car was only 120th at the end of the gruelling race.
After the good qualifying result on Friday the driver from Curitiba, who was sharing the car with Marcus Wittmann, Jörg Müller and Jesse Krohn. said: “Conditions were far from easy today, but P2 is obviously a great result. The track was still damp in some areas, so you had to be extremely careful. It’s nice that the long phase of preparations is over and that the race is now almost there. We are ready, and there’s not much more we could have done. A big 24 hours await us, and the weather will surely be a challenging factor. However, we have a strong squad and will be fully focussed.”
His comment that the weather could be a challenging factor proved prophetic, as after only 50 minutes of the 24 hour race, which started at 15.30 local time, the red flag was brought out due to hailstorms that cut across the Eifel mountains and left drivers stranded out on the 25.378 kilometre Nürburgring-Nordschleife track. It certainly earned its nickname of the “Green Hell”. At that time Jörg Müller was in the number 18 car and it was running in second. Racing action restarted just after 20.00 and it was a one-two for BMW at that time, with the number 18 car leading the number 22 ROWE Racing car with Markus Palttala at the wheel. Unfortunately on lap 17 a technical problem with the powertrain forced the Schubert car into the pits, and it was then that the mechanics produced their herculean effort and changed the engine over night.
Augusto’s comment after all these dramas was: “The biggest winners this weekend were the Schubert crew. It is a shame. We were leading the race, it was looking very good and so definitely this hurts. We got running again this morning, but by then any chances of getting a good result in the race were over for the team, despite the fact the car was running quickly. I want to say a big thanks to BMW for giving me the opportunity and to Schubert Motorsport for the amazing work done by its mechanics.”
Now Augusto heads back to the DTM and next weekend he will be racing the BMW Team MTEK BMW M4 DTM at the Lausitzring. “I have to focus on that now and go chasing the trophy in that series,” he said.
