The first few seconds of this weekend’s GT World Challenge race at Monza would make for a nice instructional video for what not to do when merging onto a busy highway. It’d also make for a case of “what not to do” for drivers participating in a big race as a whole. But these are the moves that make racing interesting, right? In this instance a Mercedes driver made a bad move and ruined the day for a lot of people. For further entertainment, the events did eventually come back around on the instigating driver. And as race fans we’re here for it.
The rolling start for the three-hour GT3 endurance race at Monza went off rather smoothly with cars going three-wide just after the start, but the field of 57 cars began to bunch up at the braking zone just before that first turn. At initial glance, much like the NASCAR adventure we touched on a few weeks back, it’s difficult to tell who the perpetrator to the chain of events might be. What you can see though are a lot of GT3 cars bunch up, and just towards the front a couple of rows of cars get entirely blown out.
What goes around comes around
With a slower motion replay, or replaying the social clip several times, you can better make out what happens. The red and white Mercedes — the #17 Mercedes-AMG of Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed, piloted by Maxime Martin — went wide on the inside as the field made its way to the first turn. Realizing its error, the #17 quickly merged in to avoid the grass, and had it stayed there it likely would have avoided more of an incident. But the #17 continued moving inwards, shoving into the #51 Ferrari of AF Corse and the chain reaction continued from there.
The initial carnage looked worse than what appears to play out in real time. Only seven cars were damaged in the incident, one of those, the #007 Aston Martin, was able to return to pit lane under its own power.
Yet a new frontrunner emerged from the dust, none other than the #17 Mercedes-AMG. Its reward for unleashing chaos doesn’t last long though. Race Control gifted the car a 3-minute stop-go penalty for causing the first lap bonanza. When the team finally served the penalty, it put the car properly at the back of the field. The penalty and the subsequent full course yellow that followed was too much a gap for the team, and they retired the car having completed 23 of the 79 laps of the race. Team and driver both vehemently deny wrongdoing, but the video speaks volumes.
