Sensational disqualification of the Verstappen team
A technical irregularity took away a Max Verstappen, Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon the beautiful victory at the 4 Hours of Nurburgring, obtained at the wheel of the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the Dutch Formula 1 champion’s team.
The team in fact used seven sets of tires instead of the six allowed by the regulations and this led to the disqualification of the car two hours after the conclusion of the race.
The announcement of the disqualification
“After crossing the finish line in the second round of the ADAC RAVENOL Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, Max Verstappen, Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon celebrated their first victory of the season in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing. About two hours later, it arrived cold shower. During the technical commission’s routine review of the so-called “Tyre App”, it emerged that the team had used seven sets of tires on race day instead of the permitted six. The stewards were then forced to disqualify the car. The victory was inherited by Dan Harper and Jordan Pepper in the BMW M4 GT3 of the ROWE RACING team.
Christian Hohenadel, Team Principal of Winward Racing: “The disqualification hurts. Unfortunately, an error was made within the team which forced the race direction to retroactively disqualify the winning car. For us, this was the first outing as a Mercedes-AMG Performance team on the Nürburgring Nordschleife. I would like sorry with everyone who was rooting for us. We will now analyze the day thoroughly, prepare meticulously for the remaining races and work with maximum concentration in view of the ADAC RAVENOL 24h Nürburgring.”
