Last weekend the Brno circuit hosted its last event of the season, called Epilog Brno 6 Hours, or more properly Invicta Epilog. Free paid practices were on schedule during Thursday, followed by official qualifying practice sessions on Friday. Out of nearly 50 entered cars on provisionally published entry lists, only 34 took the part in the main event, which was started 2 minutes before the scheduled 14:00 mark. The field, as usually, consisted of several DTM cars (2 Charouz Mercedes, one Audi 4-door and one old Audi TT built specially for hillclimb racing for a team located in Ecce Homo), bunch of GT cars of various classes, age and quality and all that was supported by large contingent of more or less modified touring cars ranging from big winged BMW's GTR through two-litre Alfa Romeo or Honda S2000 up to small Ford Fiesta or Renault Clio.
As expected, the two Charouz Racing System-entered Mercedes DTM filled the first row followed by the Bohemia Racing Team 4-door Audi DTM and the two GT1 cars in the field. Faster of them was Rock Media Motors, very nice almost prototype-looking Pagani Zonda, now featuring new green colours, and well prepared Saleen S7-R prepared and entered by K plus K motorsport, the car that was almost regularly seen in the last FIA GT Championship season before Saleen were forced out of the series following the rule changes. The Pagani was slightly faster also in the race but it did not even survive the first lap without any problems and turned to the pits. It was nice to see it back on the track after some long minutes and then circulating with some other garage visits until later of the third hour, though desperately behind anything quick. While Pagano Zonda was capable of 1:55 and the Saleen 1:56, the three DTM cars ran at a prototype speeds 1:51 or 1:52, The last DTM car, the hillclimb special was nowhere those speed at all (2:04 at best), moreover it disappeared from the scene before the 2-hour mark.
The Saleen GT1 was easily maintaining the fourth spot awaiting possible problems of any of the top DTM cars but it never happened. The Audi was slightly outpaced by the two Mercedes, which were the only cars ever featuring in the lead. Car number 1 was driven by the Charouz family supported by quick Adam Lacko, who started the race and was lapping almost 6 second quicker than anything else by this time. The other car number 11 had quicker drivers on board, at least it looked like that at the end of the race, but for the Charouz team it was better that the family car would win so the leading car number 11 was parked in the pitlane with 4 minutes to go and with almost no work on it, it was released just seconds before the race was to be finished. In the meantime, the car number 1 was flagged and applauded as a winner. The Audi finished third two laps behind while the Saleen was back another four laps.
There was a nice battle in the next positions throughout the race between various GT cars, mainly Porsches and Ferraris, but also lone Lamborghini Gallardo, and four BMW M3 GTR's, while the fifth one entered by Válek was a frequent visitor of the garage from the very beginning. The next spots belonged to smaller GT cars like Lotus Elise or Ginetta G50, both of them eventually retiring. Further behind was a space for the smaller touring cars which were mixed by increasing number of delayed GT cars as the race progressed.
The fastest of this group led by GT2-derivates was Konopka's Porsche 997 GT3 RSR. It was entered along with many other smaller and slower car under the Charouz Racing System team banner, probably in attempt to help Charouz to get team points into various class standings - in fact more than one of every three starting cars kept the Charouz team banner, obviously rarely any of them a genuine Charouz entry though. But some of the drivers in the squad were extremely slow so that before the 3-hour mark it had already been overtaken by Menx Ferrari.
Positions at the half of the six hour race were counted towards the Czech Endurance Championship - Division 4. After that several cars stopped racing as they decided not to continue for the full distance non-championship race, best of which was TopCar Machánek entered Porsche 997 GT3 RS, which was at the time running seventh overall and third among the GT2 derivates. It had a very long rear wing, never seen in any official FIA races but some of the drivers were extremely slow to allow this car to get even higher spot. Menx Ferrari then finished fifth overall after most consistent effort among this group of cars. G-Private Racing entry from Austria was sixth overall and best foreign team in the finish. The rest placed in the top 10 belonged to the best BMW M3, the Lamborghini and two Porsche 997 GT3 Cups.
Almost half of the cars retired which is very high retirement percentage compared to for example recent Le Mans Series races of a similar length, which is of course a result of the level of the entry quality, nevertheless the race was a nice though cold, and the last two hours were held in the dark. Interestingly, two of the last three classified places were occupied by Ferraris helping the marque became the only manufacturers having more than two cars in the finish (along with Porsche). The race has a long tradition, the next year we should see its tenth anniversary and we are likely to be back with our reports and photos as today.
