Yesterday (31 May 2026) was one of the most chaotic and disastrous races in years for the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup at Monza, Italy. Over the course of the 3-hour event, two major crash incidents occurred—one at the start of the first lap and another during the late-race restart before the finish—resulting in the greatest number of damaged cars seen this year.
Counting all damages throughout the race, the numbers of affected cars and the value of losses are shockingly high.
How many race cars were damaged in total?
In this race, at least 18 cars suffered severe damage forcing them to retire or leaving them badly wrecked out of the total field. These were split between two major crash waves. The first occurred right at the start (Lap 1, Turn 1), when the lead pack jostled entering the Prima Variante chicane. A collision involving the Mercedes-AMG of GetSpeed, driven by Maxime Martin, caused the Garage 59 McLaren 720S to spin across the track. This triggered a chain reaction that wrecked 12 cars in total, with at least 8 immediately retiring, including the pole-position Ford Mustang GT3 from HRT, several Ferraris 296 GT3 from AF Corse, and multiple Porsche 911 GT3 Rs.
The second major crash happened during the late-race restart about 20 minutes before the finish. Kelvin van der Linde in the WRT BMW M4 GT3 braked too late at Turn 1, rear-ending a Pure Racing Porsche and sending it spinning into other cars. This caused another devastating pile-up, flipping the Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG onto its roof in the middle of the track. Race officials deployed the safety car for the remainder of the race due to the incident.
Considering the damage value, how much might the racing teams be facing in losses? The damages from this race are estimated at several million euros, or over hundreds of millions of Thai baht (excluding taxes). All cars in this GT3 category are production-based supercars built specifically for racing. The base price of these GT3 race cars—such as the Ferrari 296 GT3, Porsche 911 GT3 R (992), BMW M4 GT3, McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, and Ford Mustang GT3—averages between 550,000 and 650,000 euros each (roughly 22 to 26 million baht per car).
Assessing the total damage, including completely wrecked cars, torn bodywork, broken suspensions, bent chassis, and carbon fiber replacements, the combined repair costs for all teams have exceeded 6 million euros, or more than 300 million baht. This represents a nightmare scenario and a huge challenge for the teams' body shops, who must urgently repair their cars before the prestigious CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa endurance race in Belgium at the end of June. Such severe losses surely worry the team owners and sponsors deeply.