With this decision, the victory of Christopher Mies, Dennis Marschall, Frank Stippler and Ricardo Feller, who shared the wheel of the R8 LMS GT3 Evo II, is therefore safe.
After a race that ended prematurely due to fog, which caused a 14-hour interruption during the night before a final restart attempt proved futile, the Audi crew was declared the winner of the stage that counts as a round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge.
However, the Rowe BMW team announced that it would challenge the result before the German Motor Sport Association (DMSB) appeals court in Frankfurt, after its on-site protest was rejected.
The main issue was whether the race management was justified in ending the race in accordance with Article 22 of the DMSB circuit rules, which Rowe Racing claimed was being misused.
The German team argued that only the red flag should have been used to end the race with 54 minutes to go, but the appeal court saw things differently.
“In justification, the court, presided over by Rainer Wicke, stated orally that the race ended correctly with the checkered flag,” a statement from DMSB read.
“Since the race director is fundamentally responsible for preventing harm to the event participants and Walter Hornung is considered one of the leading motorsport experts in the field of safety, particularly on the Nordschleife at the Nürburgring, he was able to end the race after 50 laps within the scope of his authority.”
Article 22 of the DMSB circuit rules states: “If the checkered flag is displayed early, this moment is decisive for the classification.”
Hornung told Motorsport.com that he was informed by a weather station that conditions would improve between 2pm and 2.15pm, but when this did not happen by 2.30pm, “my confidence in this weather station diminished further.”
As soon as the decision not to restart was announced, the fog finally lifted for the first time in more than 15 hours, but it was too late.
Rowe team principal Hans-Peter Naundorf protested, believing that his #98 BMW M4 GT3 driven by Raffaele Marciello, Maxime Martin, Marco Wittmann and Augusto Farfus would have won the race if the red flag had been shown.
This would have resulted in two fewer laps being counted and the remaining minimum pit stop times being added. This would have meant that all cars ahead of the #98 BMW-Rowe would have gained an additional 95 seconds, having completed three laps since their last red-flagged stop.
However, the positioning of the finish line on the track meant that the protest was based on an incorrect assumption from the start.
Cars entering the pits cross the start-finish line first and only then complete their pit stops; Rowe’s BMW crossed the start-finish line into the pit lane on lap 48, but only completed its pit stop on lap 49, a few metres further on.
The stewards also came to this conclusion when dealing with the protest on site, arguing that Rowe Racing would not have had an advantage if the race had been counted after 48 laps.
Information from the DMSB now confirms this opinion: “Furthermore, the calculations carried out by the organiser have shown that even if the red flag had been used on lap 50, the result would not have been different, since lap 48 would have been used as the basis for the calculation.”
Rowe’s argument in court that the pit lap should be counted as lap 51 was also rejected by the DMSB as it “would not be suitable as a basis for a result”.
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