The Spa weekend had begun promisingly for Walkenhorst Motorsport. After setting good times in practice the #34 BMW M6 GT3, with Nick Catsburg, Augusto Farfus and Philipp Eng at the wheel, ended pre-qualifying on Thursday in first place. However, the BMW M6 GT3 did not cope so well with the difficult weather conditions in qualifying and both Walkenhorst Motorsport crews missed out on Super Pole.

Both cars gradually worked their way up through the field in the opening stage of the race, but then Catsburg in the #34 BMW M6 GT3 collided with another car after about three hours, causing severe damage to the radiator and the front end. Catsburg returned to the circuit after a long break for repairs, but his race came to an end after 107 laps.

The #35 BMW M6 GT3 – driven by David Pittard, Martin Tomczyk and Nick Yelloly – retired in the early hours of the morning after Tomczyk suffered a serious accident on the fast Blanchimont turn. Thankfully, the BMW works driver emerged from the incident without injury.

“You have race weekends when everything goes well and then you have race weekends when a lot of things all go against you. We had a weekend like that here at Spa. There were some minor technical problems, bad luck and misunderstandings in the race, which then led to accidents. Primarily, I am glad that the BMW M6 GT3 is such a safe car, as Martin Tomczyk’s accident was pretty bad. From a sporting point of view, we are unhappy with how it went at Spa. We put a lot of work into the preparations and of course we were hoping for a different result. Nonetheless, this event is still one of the highlights of our season and we are already looking forward to competing again with the BMW M6 GT3 in the Intercontinental GT Challenge, at Kyalami in December.”

“The conditions were very treacherous. It had started to rain again after the safety car restart in the early hours of the morning. We only had a halfway-dry racing line and it was very slippery outside of that. I lost the rear end a bit on the way into Blanchimont, so I had to open up the steering and went over onto the wet part of the track. From that point on, I had no chance. Luckily, I wasn't injured but the car was very badly damaged. That is a great shame for the whole Walkenhorst team, especially as the team’s other car had already retired early.”