Shift Up Now Athlete Pippa Mann made her return to European endurance racing at the 25th edition of the 2024 Hankook 24H Barcelona at Circuit de Catalunya on September 13-15, 2024.
Mann competed in a BMW M4 GT4 for ST Racing (STR) alongside teammates Samantha Tan, Neil Verhagen, Jon Miller, and Fabian Duffieux.
Testing on the 2.894-mile, 16-turn race track took place on Wednesday and Thursday.
Track conditions on Wednesday were warm and sunny. The STR team learned quickly that managing tire wear on the abrasive surface would be crucial for the race, as lap times dropped as much as four to five seconds over the course of a practice stint. Therefore, the team’s immediate focus switched to finding a setup that would best protect the tires.
Thursday’s test sessions were overcast, and while the car felt better than the prior day, the belief was that cooler track temps were a contributing factor, so the team continued to spend all the available track time working to improve their race car.
Friday marked the first official practice, followed by qualifying and then another practice in the evening. During the first practice, STR elected to do a qualifying simulation. Tan, Duffieux, and Mann were chosen as the qualifying drivers. Unfortunately, red flags interfered with two of the runs, so the team focused forward on the upcoming qualifying session.
The first two 15-minute qualifying sessions were green, and both Tan and Duffieux set their personal-best times of the weekend. During Mann’s session, a red flag brought the field back to pit lane. However, despite the shortened session, she set a time fast enough for the average fastest time of the 3 drivers to secure a second-place qualifying position in the GT4 class.
The evening practice that followed was Mann’s first time driving Circuit de Catalunya at night. She set four timed laps on Hankook tires while working on finding her references for the race. At the end of the session, Verhagen’s time put the team in P1.
The 2024 Hankook 24H Barcelona began at noon local time on Saturday. Verhagen was behind the wheel for the first stint. Knowing that managing both traffic and tires were the primary objectives, he settled into a fast, smooth pace. He maintained the team’s second-place spot before handing the car over to Tan, who then took the lead of the class. Duffieux was up next, and extended the in-class lead.
When Mann took the wheel, she added a lap to their total lead. However, as the team prepared for the next driver change, the BMW M4 GT4 began to suffer from loss of power and AC failure. While it wasn’t enough to take STR out of its three-lap lead with Tan behind the
wheel, Duffieux was next in the car and saw the issues worsen during his stint.
In order to investigate while not losing overall time, STR elected to do an early brake change, believing that the new brakes would last for the remaining 16 hours.
The team identified an intercooler leak issue, in which a small rock had pierced one of the radiators. The Bas Koeten Racing team, which runs the car for STR in Europe, worked quickly to get the M4 GT4 back on track.
With only minimal laps lost, Mann took the wheel once again in fifth place, and three laps behind a podium spot. Night had set in and her previous practice time proved invaluable, allowing her to get up to speed immediately. The car was marginally down on power and
running without AC, and while the team had mitigated the leak to a large extent they were still stuck making slightly longer pit stops in order to top off the intercooler each time the car came in for fuel.
Miller took the wheel next, then Verhagen. Both helped the team make gains in the overall order as they drove through the night. By the time dawn broke around 7am local time, STR’s strategy around Code 60s and driver order had them back in the hunt for the lead, with Duffieux making the move that put them back in front once more.
Tan took the wheel, then Mann with just under three hours to go. The British driver was able to extend the lead by putting them one lap up on the second-place car during her stint.
With one hour left in the race, Tan took over for the final stint. After she left the pits, a fuel pressure alarm appeared. When the car self-selected seventh gear and limp mode, she was forced to pull over and come to a complete stop to power-cycle the car.
Once restarted, Tan ran an excellent pace for the next four to five laps, maintaining the gap ahead of the second-place car. But bad luck struck again when the pressure alarm signaled once more and she had to pull over and repeat the restart process.
Tan managed to maintain the lead, but was passed when the alarm incredibly reappeared for the third time. Determined not to give up, she ran underneath the wing of the new leader lap after lap, but the loss of power from the intercooler issue caused a lack of speed, which made passing tough.
Nevertheless, Tan persisted and continued to put pressure on the car ahead. At a restart following a Code 60, she nearly made a move stick to take back the lead. But it wasn’t meant to be and the STR team crossed the finish line one second behind the race winner in the GT4 class.
“Sometimes a second-place finish feels like you’ve won the race, and sometimes it’s just heartbreaking,” said Mann. “We did everything humanly possible to try to win this race for STR and BMW, but it just wasn’t our day. On the positive side, we can all be very proud of our performance. The entire Bas Koeten team running the car for STR was incredible, our pit-stops were consistently good, and all of the drivers gave it everything they had.
“Personally, I’m just so grateful to have had this opportunity to join Samantha Tan Racing for this event. Having four fast teammates, all of whom were focused on one goal, was a very cool experience. And joining a team of this caliber for an event like this was truly a ‘pinch me’ moment. I want to send a massive thank you to Jon Lee Miller, and to Sam and Ken Tan, for inviting and welcoming me to this team for this event.”
