The team was in the mix throughout all three free practice sessions, where the focus was on following up the season opening pole position at Imola while getting the Bronze-rated drivers comfortable with the McLaren GT3 EVO around the demanding seven-kilometre Grand Prix venue.
“Huge congratulations to the whole Garage 59 team on an excellent race and our first WEC win of the season! The drivers all performed flawlessly, and the team executed the pitstops superbly. This sets us up nicely for Le Mans where, as Mclaren Motorsport, we will continue to work closely with Garage 59 towards another strong performance,” commented Giorgio Sanna, Head of Motorsport, McLaren Automotive.
Qualifying 11th (#58) and 15th (#10) on the grid, the drivers made impressive progress in the race. Antares Au quickly began moving forward, gaining six places across his two stints which included a number of decisive overtakes.
Silver-ranked driver Tom Fleming took over for the middle two hours and climbed from ninth to second place, ending his stint less than a second behind the leading car. Marvin Kirchhöfer then brought the car home over the final two hours, applying relentless pressure to the leading Ferrari.
In the end, the decisive moment came during the final pit stop. The Garage 59 crew produced an exceptional stop to get the car out and force an error from the race-leading team, which was subsequently handed a drive-through penalty for an unsafe release. That left Marvin needing only to manage the gap to bring the McLaren GT3 EVO home for Garage 59’s first WEC victory.
“After Imola, everyone has worked so hard to make sure we could bounce back quickly. The pit stops were perfect; the drivers did a fantastic job – every member of the team was on it today. It has been a challenging week leading up to today as we have had a few issues with the car, so this win is a great reward for all of that work. I also want to mention Benji’s final stint – that was the best driving I have ever seen from him!” added Andrew Kirkaldy, Team Principal, Garage 59.
The sister car had to overcome track-limits penalties in the opening hours, but once they had been served, Finn Gehrsitz and Benji Goethe delivered an excellent recovery drive, climbing from 15th to finish fifth and securing a valuable haul of championship points.
“I want to credit my team mates who did an outstanding job, especially to keep us away from penalties, which was a big deciding factor is getting us up to the front. About 15-20 minutes into my stint the team told me that the lead Ferrari had received a penalty for an unsafe release so that meant I had to stay within five seconds of the Ferrari but also make sure nobody passed me. We could only dream of bouncing back this quickly after Imola so this win feels great and the team very much deserves it,” concluded Marvin Kirchhöfer, Driver #10 McLaren GT3 EVO.
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