Comtoyou Storms to Nürburgring Win, Winward Seals Endurance Cup Title

Text: Rick Kiewiet

Images: SRO

GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS reached a decisive point in its Endurance Cup campaign at the Nürburgring, with a maiden Silver crown for Team WRT and a second Endurance Cup title for Maro Engel and Luca Stolz sealed alongside Comtoyou Racing's dominant victory. Lucas Auer added a first crown of his own, the trio doing just enough in the #48 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO to clinch matters with a round still to go.

Qualifying

The #007 Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Marco Sørensen, Mattia Drudi and Nicki Thiim claimed pole with an average of 1:53.591, just over a tenth clear of Maxime Martin, Maximilian Götz and Fabian Schiller in the #17 Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed entry. It was Aston Martin's first pole in the series since the 2018 CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa. The #80 Lionspeed GP Porsche had topped the first two segments courtesy of quick laps from Ricardo Feller and Thomas Preining, but a lowly Q3 from Bastian Buus dropped the reigning Spa winners to third on the combined times, just ahead of the #59 Garage 59 McLaren of Joseph Loake, Dean Macdonald and Marvin Kirchhöfer.

The #32 Team WRT BMW of Kelvin van der Linde, Charles Weerts and Jordan Pepper was fastest of all on raw pace but dropped to eighth on the grid after Weerts picked up a three-place penalty for an unsafe move in practice, promoting the #3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing entry and the Gold Cup-pole-sitting #58 Garage 59 McLaren. That left the championship-leading #48 Winward Mercedes-AMG seventh on the grid, needing fourth place or better to be crowned champions a round early. Ben Dörr set the outright fastest lap of the weekend in the #23 Team RJN McLaren, a 1:53.070 that broke the Nürburgring qualifying record.

Comtoyou control the race from the front

Sørensen converted pole into the early lead, resisting an opening-lap challenge from Buus before the Lionspeed Porsche's undercut attempt was undone by a Full Course Yellow for Tommy Pintos' stranded Greystone GT McLaren, which dropped Feller to 22nd once the frontrunners cycled through their stops. From there Drudi and then Thiim kept the Aston Martin at the head of the field through a chaotic middle portion of the race disrupted by three separate Safety Car periods, with the #98 ROWE Racing BMW and #2 Boutsen VDS Porsche briefly inheriting the lead on the road after gambling on a late fuel stop under caution, only for the yellow flag they needed to reset their stint times never to arrive.

The closest Comtoyou came to losing the win was at the final round of stops, when Kirchhöfer's McLaren attempted a one-lap undercut. Thiim held firm on his out-lap and pulled clear, with Kirchhöfer then handed a 10-second penalty for speeding under Full Course Yellow that dropped the McLaren out of contention entirely. Thiim crossed the line just over half a second clear of the McLaren on the road, a margin that stretched to 5.751 seconds over the promoted #32 WRT BMW of Pepper, Weerts and van der Linde once the penalty was applied — Aston Martin's first outright win at the Nürburgring in GT World Challenge Europe.

Kirchhöfer's penalty proves decisive for Winward

That same penalty was what handed Winward Racing the title. Engel, who started the #48 Mercedes-AMG seventh, held station through a combative opening stint that included side-to-side contact with the #99 Tresor Attempto Audi of Alex Aka, before Stolz and Auer gained a position at each of the remaining stops. Kirchhöfer's demotion put the Mercedes-AMG into the fourth place it needed for the first time all afternoon, and it stayed there to the flag.

It marks a second Endurance Cup title for Engel and Stolz, who previously won together in 2018, and a maiden crown for Auer, with the trio also the first in the category's history to clinch the drivers' title with a round in hand. The #3 Verstappen Racing Mercedes-AMG of Daniel Juncadella, Chris Lulham and Jules Gounon completed the podium, while the #17 GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG slipped to fifth after a slow-starting engine cost time at its final stop.

Gold goes the way of Tresor Attempto

The Gold Cup produced one of the more unexpected results of the weekend. Pole-sitter Garage 59 had led the class for much of the first half with the #58 McLaren, only for Louis Prette to be slowed by a gearbox problem around a Safety Car restart just shy of half-distance; the car briefly rejoined before retiring, and with it went the class points lead, which passed to the fourth-placed #998 ROWE Racing BMW by a three-point margin. That left the #99 Tresor Attempto Audi of Aka, Andrea Frassineti and Dylan Pereira to fight it out with the #10 Boutsen VDS Porsche of Gilles Magnus, Pereira eventually forcing his way through at Turn 1 with under half an hour remaining to seal the Audi's first class win of the season in seventh overall. The #71 Selected Car Racing Ferrari completed the Gold podium.

Silver settled by a late overtake, Bronze goes the way of the pole-sitter

In Silver, the #65 HRT Ford Mustang of Eduardo Coseteng, Nicolas Baert and Niklas Kalus denied the points-leading #30 Team WRT BMW victory with a pass on Ignacio Montenegro in the closing stages — the Mustang's first class win in the series — but second place was still enough to confirm the title for Montenegro, Matisse Lismont and Amaury Cordeel. The #6 GetSpeed Team Bartone Bros Mercedes-AMG completed the podium. The Optimum Motorsport McLaren's Silver challenge ended when a puncture stranded the car on the approach to Turn 14, triggering the race's final Safety Car after a McLaren from the Greystone GT squad made contact with the stopped car.

The Bronze Cup class win went to the #222 2 Seas Motorsport Mercedes-AMG of Reece Barr, Charles Dawson and Kiern Jewiss, successfully defending their result from last year's race after reclaiming the lead at the final stops when the previously front-running #87 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG picked up a five-second penalty. The #74 Kessel Racing Ferrari recovered from an early drive-through to complete the class podium in third, while the #991 Paradine Competition BMW's early lead unravelled through a three-wide battle at Turn 16 and a subsequent pit lane infringement that left it seventh in class.

Attention now turns to the Sprint Cup, with Zandvoort up next on 18-20 September, before the Endurance Cup concludes the season at Portimão on 16-17 October.