BMW juniors on top in 24-hour warm-ups

Irish budding Nurburgring Nordschleife hero Dan Harper was part of the winning BMW Junior Team line-up in last weekend’s Nurburgring 24 Hours qualifying races.

Harper co-drove fellow youngsters Max Hesse and

Neil Verhagen to victory in Saturday’s three-hour race in their Rmg-run M4 GT3, beating the Rowe Racing BMW of ‘seniors’ Philipp Eng, Nick Yelloly, polewinner Augusto Farfus and Connor De Phillippi.

It was the BMW juniors (right) who crossed the finish line first again on Sunday.

They upheld Munich honour following dramas for the Rowe and Walkenhorst (for which Jesse Krohn had qualified on pole) cars, but a late 40-second time penalty for a Code 60 offence denied them the victory. Honours therefore went to the Getspeed Mercedes of Adam Christodoulou, Maximilian

Gotz and Fabian Schiller.

That was some consolation for Getspeed, whose other Merc trio of Maro Engel, Jules Gounon and Daniel Juncadella finished third on Saturday, before Gounon shunted out of a likely second late on Sunday.

Hesse put in a charge in the closing stages to move up to second on corrected times ahead of the two Car Collection Audis, with Christopher Mies beating Christopher Haase.

Fifth were Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber in their KCMG Porsche.