If you look back at the 52nd edition of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring from a distance, a few scenes remain in your memory in addition to the shortest race in history and the premature end. This certainly includes the ‘save of the year’, as a video clip describes it that went viral on social media during and after the race.
Crazy: A 20-second clip was viewed more than 10 million times on Instagram and Twitter, in which an onboard camera shows young driver Jusuf Owega catching the #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the Mercedes-AMG Team BILSTEIN, which was threatening to get out of control, at the very last second and being able to continue the journey unscathed.
Internet celebrates Jusuf Owega’s ‘incredible save’
A typical case of ‘Code Brown’, as it is often called in motorsport jargon, and a situation that could easily have led to a serious accident at speeds of around 200 km/h. The capture maneuver ended well, as is well known, and so the 22-year-old Owega was celebrated by fans from all over the world for his ‘incredible save’. The incident involving the Cologne native, who will compete in the DTM in 2023, took place appropriately in the so-called ‘Mutkurve’, officially known as the Klostertalkurve, on the Nordschleife.
“It was critical at first,” Owega says to Motorsport-Magazin.com. “If you lose the car in such a situation and crash, the race is usually over. That was my biggest concern in the cockpit at first. I was on my second lap in my first stint. If that had ended the race for us, it would have been extremely bitter. Especially because we were in the leading group.”
Owega: “In a moment like this, time just seems slower”
In the scene in question during the 22nd race lap early Saturday evening, Owega was defending himself against the onrushing Dennis Marschall in the #16 Audi of the Scherer-Sport-PHX team, who would later win the race. Most spectators must have been left breathless when they saw through Marschall’s onboard front camera how the GT3 Mercedes driving in front of him began to skid, came onto the grass verge on the right, lost the rear slightly and shot across the road. Owega managed to catch the Mercedes entered by HRT at the last moment and continue driving.
For a non-racing driver, it is simply impossible to understand what goes on in the driver’s head during such high-speed scenes. Owega explains: “In such a moment, time simply seems to pass more slowly, it really feels that way. I can remember it exactly. I notice the rear axle coming and mentally I had already written off the race. ‘It can’t be true that I’m going to throw the car away in my first stint,’ I thought. But luckily I somehow managed to correct the car. The movements on the steering wheel were all instinctive.”
It is important to Owega to clear up the internet speculation that the flashing headlights of Marschall’s Audi R8 LMS GT3 had previously distracted him: “I saw some comments saying that the flashing distracted me. That was not the case and had no effect. You block things out because it is normal on the Nordschleife anyway. We also have specially tinted windows in the car for the bright lights when driving at night.”
Explained: How Owega intercepted the HRT Mercedes
According to Owega, the situation was triggered because he had previously turned in slightly too early and had to correct slightly in order not to hit the kerb on the left side of the road. “I then entered the bend and suddenly noticed the rear axle coming. I came a little sideways, turned about 90 degrees and then straightened the steering wheel a little. Then the rear came around again because the car was sliding over the grass verge and I had to countersteer fully again.”
Motorsport-Magazin.com was able to view the private onboard recording of the Mercedes-AMG GT3 and how quickly Owega reacted on the steering wheel several times. He believes: “I suspect that there was less grip on the rear right tire and I was able to ‘slide along’ on the grass. Then the car came back straight – and I took a deep breath.” He explains that Owega pressed the brake pedal during the action as follows: “Actually, you’re not supposed to brake when the car is sideways. I only touched the brake minimally, simply to take a bit of speed off.”
But hand on heart, Jusuf, who was the more important companion on board at that moment: talent or luck? “Phew, there was definitely a bit of luck involved. A bit of both, I would say,” answers the older brother of the reigning ADAC GT Masters champion Salman Owega, who drove the #6 HRT Mercedes at the Nürburgring, honestly.
Crazy: Nobody saw the crazy maneuver!
If the ‘Nordschleife save’ itself wasn’t spectacular enough, the story got even crazier because Owega’s maneuver wasn’t shown on TV at all because the cameras were fully focused on the accident of Rowe BMW driver Sheldon van der Linde at the time! The onboard video just kept making the rounds on social media and was shared by two fan accounts with a wide reach (each with around 4 million views to date).
Owega remembers and has to laugh a little: “The scene really wasn’t shown on TV. I said on the team radio that I had just had a moment in the courage curve. As a joke, I told my engineer that he should look away if it was shown on TV!”
And he continued: “He just said that he hadn’t seen anything after I had finished my stint and was back in the garage. ‘That can’t be true,’ I thought. Then I remembered that the Scherer Audi has a live onboard camera in the car and I looked on my phone. It had captured the scene perfectly. I then showed it to my engineer. He just said that I was right when I told him on the radio that he shouldn’t look…”
After that, the incident was over from Owega’s point of view. During the race, he had not expected that other people would even see this crazy scene. Millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes and thousands of comments tell a slightly different story… Jusuf grins: “Wrong thought!”