The serious accident at the extended WEC race in Spa-Francorchamps has bad consequences for Earl Bamber. The Cadillac driver will receive a penalty on the starting grid for the next round of the season – of all things the important 24 Hours of Le Mans (June 15-16, 2024).
The stewards identified the experienced New Zealander as the cause of the collision with Sean Gelael’s #31 WRT-BMW M4 GT3 and gave him an additional five starting positions for his next WEC race (Le Mans). The stewards announced their decision on Sunday night at 12:01 a.m., three hours after the end of the race.
Cadillac travels to Le Mans with grid penalty
Bamber, Le Mans winner in 2015 and 2017, also received three penalty points. At this year’s endurance classic, the 33-year-old will share one of the three LMDh Cadillacs with IndyCar star Alex Palou and his WEC teammate Alex Lynn. The grid penalty may not be as significant in a 24-hour race, but it still represents a disadvantage in the extremely strong competition from hypercars.
Cadillac-BMW accident: shocking moment in Spa
The serious accident between the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R (Bamber, Lynn) and the GT3-BMW (Leung, Gelael, Farfus) was a big shock moment in the race, which was extended by almost two hours on the Belgian Ardennes circuit. A blessing in disguise: Both drivers were checked at the medical center after the crash, but were uninjured.
Caddy driver Bamber drove closely in the slipstream of Neel Jani’s #99 Porsche on the infamous Kemmel straight until, in this tight, high-speed situation, he hit the rear of the WRT BMW driving on the right, took off briefly and spun several times on the track . The race ended early for the US car and the GT3 driver in the accident. The accident triggered a red flag of almost two hours and later caused the race to be extended by 1:44 hours after the accident site had been extensively repaired.
WRT-BMW unlucky – Valentino Rossi has to watch
The early end of the #31 BMW meant a total failure in the LMGT3 category for the local heroes from WRT, who had recently achieved a double victory in Imola. During the second hour of racing, the #46 BMW hit Valentino Rossi makes his WEC debut after making contact with the #38 Jota-Porsche (Rasmussen, Hanson, Button) into the barriers. The cause of this situation was, of all people, Rene Rast in the #20 BMW M Hybrid V8 (Sheldon van der Linde, Rast, Frijns), who was given a drive-through penalty.
“Unfortunately, both LMGT3 cars were taken out of the race by Hypercars. That should be a sign that this is something that needs to be responded to,” warned BMW works driver Augusto Farfus, who took the #31 M4 GT3 with Gelael and Darren Leung shares.
The WEC race in Spa-Francorchamps offered non-stop drama and highlights. Do you want to know how a customer team sensationally celebrated victory with Jota-Porsche? You can read all the background information in the following article: