BMW will not accept 'very unfair' penalty imposed on Ferrari for Vanthoor/Kubica accident

Six hours and 35 minutes after the start of the most prestigious race in the World Endurance Championship, the No. 83 Ferrari 499P driven by Kubica swerved into the No. 15 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Vanthoor as they were circling around the #92 Manthey Pure Rxcing GT3 approaching the Mulsanne corner, which sent the Belgian driver into the wall and caused the BMW to retire from the race.

The #83 Ferrari received a 30-second stop-and-go penalty but managed to stay on the lead lap, keeping it in contention for victory under current car rules. security grouping all the cars in the lead lap when the race is over. neutralized.

Vanthoor was furious with the stewards’ decision and took to pushing someone back at 300 km/h and a 30 second penalty Sorry @FIAWEC, I’m losing confidence here.

Team boss Vosse told Motorsport.com it was intolerable that the Ferrari that caused the accident could return to the front of the field, and said he would have argued for a penalty of three or five minutes. which would have caused the #83 car to fall a lap.

“At the end of the day, this is something we will not accept,” the Belgian said. “For me the penalty was very unfair. You are taking away someone’s race. You deserve much more to be slowed down in one way or another than to be able to fight for the podium again three hours later .”

Vincent Vosse, WRT Team Principal

Photo by: Marc Fleury

However, Vosse has no hard feelings towards Kubica, a former Team WRT driver who won the ELMS and WEC championships in the LMP2 class with the Belgian team in 2021 and 2023 respectively, while finishing second at the 24 Hours of Le Mans l last year with the team. his friends Rui Andrade and Louis Deletraz.

“I’m close to Robert, he drove for us for a few years,” Vosse emphasized. “We won the championship with him last year and he is someone I respect a lot.

“I will say that I didn’t expect something like that from him, but I won’t judge him. First of all, I’m going to calm down and talk to him probably next week about the incident.

“For a sportsman of his level – and he really is a sportsman, because I see him like that – I have to say that, unfortunately, I was disappointed with the situation.”

The 24 Hours of Le Mans was generally disappointing for the BMW Hypercar factory team, with Marco Wittmann spinning the same #15 car on lap 6, while Robin Frijns crashed with the #15 car. °20 after bouncing off a curb at the Ford chicane at 6:23 p.m. . The car limped to the pits and returned to the track only 21 hours later to take the checkered flag, without being classified.

BMW M Motorsport director Andreas Roos told Motorsport.com that the car could have been back on track sooner, but the German manufacturer did not want to risk further damage before the WEC round in Sao Paulo on the 14th. July.

“Le Mans can always be quite brutal,” added Roos. “The first thing is we must not make mistakes, which we haven’t managed. There are too many mistakes.”

“This is how we try to win races today,” analyzed Vosse. “Unfortunately we found that we were fast at one point, but maybe a little too fast, or trying too hard.

“We didn’t learn as much as we hoped about our cars, because in the end we couldn’t spend the night with our cars. Let’s just say we learned what not to do next year .”