Jetalliance Racing elected to miss the latest rounds of the FIA GT Championship in Bucharest despite Karl Wendlinger qualifying on the front row of the grid in the Romanian capital.

The former F1 racer had been the only person to get close to Marcel Fassler's Corvette during the session to put the #33 car on the front row of the grid. The sister car of team owner Lukas Lichtner-Hoyer and Alex Muller qualified in seventh place.

However, following qualifying, the team discovered a technical issue with both of its cars and, with uncertainty over the cause, elected to pull out of the weekend for safety reasons despite Lichtner-Hoyer admitting it had been an 'unpopular' decision.

“We have discovered technical problems with both cars after qualifying, whose causes are yet unknown,” he said. “I'm accustomed to giving safety the top priority in aviation, and in this case, I applied the same principle to the race team, forcing myself to take this unpopular, yet certainly only appropriate decision.

“This measure is even harder because we are giving up a front row start.”