Midnight bombshell at the 2026 24 Hours of Spa: Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed made a mistake after regular qualifying that has far-reaching consequences. The reason is illegal work on the brake during the Q3 session, which is not permitted by the regulations.
The GetSpeed Mercedes #17, which had secured the provisional fastest time on track, retroactively loses all lap times from the third qualifying segment (Q3). That means the squad around the trio of Maxime Martin, Maximilian Götz and Fabian Schiller is completely out of Friday afternoon’s Superpole.
With a combined average time of 2:17.049 minutes, the three drivers in the AMG GT3 had put themselves at the top of the 32-car field for the top single-lap shootout.
The Mercedes was caught by the TV cameras during the session as two mechanics removed the right rear brake and pulled a huge amount of stones and sand out of the car. Maximilian Götz had apparently had an excursion into the gravel trap that was not shown in the broadcast.
Per regulations, such extensive work on the car is not permitted while qualifying is in progress.
As a result, all lap times set in Q3 were deleted for the car. Since the regulations at Spa stipulate that the average of all drivers is counted, the absence of an entire segment causes the drop to the bottom of the classification.
The car’s final starting position has not yet been communicated, but it will be around 60th place. Several cars behind had not completed a lap in Q2 due to the red flags, and there are also minor grid penalties for other cars.
Starting position shakeup
Although the starting position is of secondary importance for the 24-hour race, the Mercedes-AMG GT3 will have to fight its way through the entire field in the early stages, which always poses a risk. If the team manages to work its way through there, a race with weather capers awaits, in which anything will be possible.
GetSpeed’s exclusion reshuffles the positions at the top of the standings. The new top favorite and nominally fastest car of Thursday evening heading into Superpole is now the AF Corse Ferrari #51 of Alessio Rovera, Tommaso Mosca and Nicklas Nielsen.
Another Mercedes-AMG GT3 has newly made it into Superpole, namely the #20 of Levente Revesz, Christian Mansell, Yannick Mettler and Rui Andrade from Team Motopark. It had originally been left stranded in the thankless 33rd place by the tiny margin of 0.010 seconds.
Due to GetSpeed’s exclusion, the Motopark quartet from the Silver Cup now moves up to 32nd place and snatches the very last ticket for Friday’s big shootout at the very last second, which will be held in four parts for the first time.
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– The Motorsport.com Team