With victory in the Silverstone twelve-hour race, ROFGO Racing sealed the next season win for Mercedes-AMG Motorsport in the 24H GT Series. After a strong performance with the #31 Mercedes-AMG GT3, Roald Goethe (GER), Stuart Hall and Daniel Brown (both GBR) secured the overall win as well as first place in the A6-PRO class. With PROsport Performance in seventh place, another Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Customer Racing Team made it into the top ten.
- Overall win for ROFGO Racing
- ROFGO Racing best-placed team in the A6-PRO class
- Two Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the top ten
Silverstone – Mercedes-AMG Motorsport’s success story in the 24H Series continues: some two months after victory in the 24-hour race at Dubai, the performance brand from Affalterbach scored its second season win in the twelve-hour race at Silverstone, the opening round of the 2018 24H GT Series European Championship.
The #31 ROFGO Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 started from tenth place on the grid for the first five hours of the race on Friday afternoon. Just after the start, the eventually winning team was hit by the #85 PROsport Performance Mercedes-AMG GT3, but both cars were able to continue their race. In difficult conditions with heavy rain at times, Roald Goethe, Stuart Hall and Daniel Brown worked their way up into fifth place in spite of a brief excursion into the gravel bed in the first half of the race. As the action resumed on Saturday, the trio continued where it had stopped on the previous day: while conditions remained changeable, the #31 Mercedes-AMG GT3 gradually moved up and eventually took the lead. After twelve hours of racing, final driver Daniel Brown brought the car home to claim the overall win and first place in the A6-PRO class.
Charles Putman, Charles Espenlaub and Joe Foster (all USA) also showed a strong performance with the #85 Mercedes-AMG GT3. After a difficult opening stage with an early pit stop and a restart from the pit lane on Saturday, they made the best use of the Mercedes-AMG GT3’s strengths and finished the race in seventh place. Thus, they secured another top ten result for Mercedes-AMG Motorsport. In the A6-Am class, they were classified third.
The #17 IDEC Sport Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Patrice Lafargue, Paul Lafargue und Dimitri Enjalbert (all FRA) was in contention for the GT class win for a long time. After an accident just before the end of the first part of the race, the trio had to retire from the Silverstone 12H.
Roald Goethe, ROFGO Racing #31: “We are very proud of this result, for which we have been waiting for such a long time. The entire team, and Stuart Hall and Daniel Brown in particular, have done a fantastic job.”
Stuart Hall, ROFGO Racing #31: “After that terrifying moment in the opening stages, we were doing better and better in the race. Conditions here at Silverstone are really difficult, the track is extremely slippery and it is easy to slide off the track. Having sealed ROFGO Racing’s maiden race win in the 24H Series is simply great. We have worked very hard to achieve this.”
Daniel Brown, ROFGO Racing #31: “The team has done a super job and found a good strategy. I really have enjoyed the weekend with the Mercedes-AMG GT3, not having raced such a modern car for quite a while. It took me a few laps to find my way, but then it was as if I had never done anything else.”
Charles Espenlaub, PROsport Performance #85: “After a difficult start, we had to take on the second part of the race from the very back. But the entire team has worked hard and we were able to work our way up more and more. Driving the Mercedes-AMG GT3 in conditions like these really is a dream.”
Result 12H Silverstone – 24H GT Series*:
* subject to confirmation by the organiser |
