Dan Harper Left Frustrated By Missed Nürburgring Opportunity

BMW M Motorsport works driver Dan Harper narrowly missed out on a top ten finish from a frustrating race in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup at the Nürburgring this past weekend (26-28 July).

Harper and his team-mates Max Hesse and Augusto Farfus headed into the event determined to continue their fantastic start to the season, having taken a stunning win in the season opener at Paul Ricard before mounting a podium challenge in the 24 Hours of Spa.

Confident of a strong showing on a very familiar circuit to the three of them, the ROWE Racing team-mates produced good pace from the off as the typically unpredictable Nürburgring weather served up one wet and one dry session in official testing on Friday. The inclement conditions continued on Saturday with heavy rain and mist across the Eiffel circuit, however it didn’t affect the #998 crew as they took finished inside the top ten in both free practice and pre-qualifying in their Multibank Group-backed BMW M4 GT3. The impressive lap times continued on a dry circuit on Sunday, with the combined efforts of Harper, Hesse and Farfus across their qualifying sessions securing them eighth on the grid as the highest-placed BMW for the three-hour race that afternoon.

Farfus started the race and was unfortunately a casualty of a chaotic run through the opening sequence of corners, as slight contact with a Mercedes sent him spinning onto the grass. Recovering back in 35th place, a mega comeback drive was required. The hugely-experienced Brazilian racer did exactly that as he scythed his way up the order, swiftly getting back into the top 20 before picking off a run of gold class cars ahead to get up to 14th position before diving into the pitlane at the end of the first hour.

Harper was next in the hotseat and had his sights set on further progress. Emerging from the pitstop in 13th, the Northern Irishman quickly gained a place before settling in the middle of a long train of cars running from seventh position back to 15th. With the group of cars proving to be incredibly closely-matched, progress proved to be tough to make despite his best efforts to dispatch the Mercedes ahead. Harper eventually handed over to Hesse for the final hour, with the German ace picking up one more spot for an eventual 11th place finish.

Daniel Harper: “It’s disappointing how the race played out. The spin at the start was a racing incident and it happens in motorsport, but dropping down to P25 gave us a big challenge to regain the lost ground on a circuit that it notoriously difficult to overtake around. Once we got into the long train of Pro cars, progress was tricky with such fine margins between us. Ultimately 11th is a frustrating result as without the early issue, we’re confident we’d have been battling for a top six finish and some points, but we’ll regroup now and come back stronger at Monza.”

The penultimate round of the 2024 GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup season takes place at Monza in Italy (21-22 September), before the finale at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia (29-30 November).