Markus Palttala, Lucas Luhr, and Maxime Martin in the #46 Marc VDS Z4 GT3 finished third in the Blancpain Endurance Series six hour race at Circuit Paul Ricard on June 20. The Z4 started from the pit lane because of an engine change after qualifying and made its way through the 61-car pack to finish on the podium.
The win went to Alex Buncombe, Wolfgang Reip and Katsumasa Chiyo in a Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3. The Nissan finished just over seven seconds ahead of a Bentley Continental GT3 driven by Steven Kane, Guy Smith, and Andy Meyrick. The margin was less than two seconds until the Bentley spun and recovered with just under ten minutes left in the race.
The enduro marked the first test of the ROAL Motorsport Z4 GT3 driven by Alex Zanardi, Bruno Spengler, and Timo Glock. BMW Motorsport engineers had outfitted the car so that Zanardi, who lost his legs in a CART accident a number of years ago, could share it with Spengler and Glock.
All of the modifications worked well, but the car was withdrawn after four hours of competition because of fluid leaks. The race was run as a test for the 24 Hours of Spa in July, and with the test day for the Spa race just a few days away the team elected not to risk the car.
Spengler said, “It was very important for us to test here in order to get the experience of a race weekend and to find out how well the modifications work for us. I have to say that BMW Motorsport did the perfect job. For example, it is not an easy task to optimize the seat and the seating position in a way that makes all three drivers happy. But this has been the case. I did a one-hour stint without any issues. Already everything is working very well, so we only need to fine-tune some details. We would have liked to race a bit longer in order to collect even more experience, but now we will focus on the test in Spa-Francorchamps where the entire team will continue to work hard preparing for the 24-hour race.”—Brian S. Morgan
