We have a mega grid assembled and ready to race. Hopes are for a clean start. Lots of people are allowed to check out the starting grid. Again, we have David Addison, Ryan Myrehn, and John Watson in the commentary box for this opening stanza, sure to be joined by other colleagues as the race goes on. We want an opening lap that is clean. You never know if all 58 cars will go through cleanly. It is nearly time to go racing. The idea is to stay out of trouble. Mirko Bortolotti is ready to go. Bortolotti sat out this race last fall but is back again. On the pole, AKKA ASP. Jules Gounon will take the third stint in their car. He says that respect of the track, the race, the history, is important, and the team wants to give 100%. Starting position does not really matter.
It is time to race, and it is not far away. Daniel Juncadella and Raffaele Marciello will
be capable co-drivers to team up with Jules Gounon. Ricardo Feller is ready to go and he believes
this is the best GT3 race on the planet.
It is a long one and he wants to have a safe start at least as we get
underway. GT World Challenge America
lead announcer Ryan Myrehn is amazed to be back calling the race here at Spa,
again with Mr. Addison and Mr. Watson.
Maro Engel is excited to get this race started and we should have a dry
race this year. Engel will take the
second stint in the race.
Here are some of the other cars we will keep an eye on. 2018 winners Walkenhorst Motorsport in the
#34 BMW M6 GT3 with David Pittard from England, Sheldon van der Linde from
South Africa, and Germany’s Marco Wittmann.
Starting sixth, the #38 Jota McLaren 720S GT3. This is an all-British team with Ben
Barnicoat the starting driver, alongside Rob Bell and Ollie Wilkinson. The front engine BMW will be compliant and
perhaps more so than some of the mid and rear engine cars. In 38th place, we see the #2
Getspeed Mercedes AMG GT3 in Pro Am.
This team has run a lot at the Nurburgring. Nico Bastian is the starting driver for this
Pro-Am team with a four-driver lineup.
Bastian sharing with Jim Pla, Olivier Grotz, and Florian
Scholze. Two German’s, a Dutchman, and a
Frenchman. That black and yellow livery
will be easy to see. Here is another
opotential winner. In ninth place, the
iconic Martini colors for GPX Racing and car #22. This Porsche 911 GT3R is being shared by
three stalwart drivers for the brand with Earl Bamber starting the car and
sharing it with Matthieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell. Ben Barnicoat in the Jota McLaren, he is
ready for his opening driving stint. A
big improvement for McLaren. There is a
small number of McLaren’s in the race this year, but they ought to be
formidable. We have another lineup in
the Silver Cup to keep an eye out for.
The Bentley Boys are back. Not
with a factory car, mind you. That
effort ended after their win at the 2020 Bathurst 12 Hours. But the CMR #107 Bentley in Silver Cup has a
formidable quartet. France’s Pierre
Alexander Jean will start the car sharing with countryman Nelson Panciatici, a
man with prototype sports car experience, alongside Englishman Stuart White,
and Belgian driver, in his home race, Ulysse de Pauw. It is the sole Bentley in the field,
qualifying 13th on the grid.
Could we see Ferrari and the Prancing Horse win here at
Spa? The #51 car for Iron Lynx could
make that a possibility. This is the
trio of Italian Alessandro Pier Guidi, a man who we have seen in World
Endurance competition this year, sharing with Dane Nicklas Nielsen who has also
run in FIA WEC in a Ferrari for AF Corse, and the third driver, is rapid
Frenchman Come Ledogar. Pier Guidi
starts the car. The drivers might have
confidence in the tires as we get ready to start. It will be a rolling start behind the safety
car. Three-minute warning from Race
Director Alain Adam. We will hear him
clicking the radio quite often. Track
limits will be observed, and you will be penalized if you abuse them.
This will be a huge challenge. One shot a year for a race like this here at
Spa as the Belgian flag flies as we have seen flooding here in Belgium, and the
teams are standing with the victims of the flodding. Marvin Kirchhofer is set to start the #188
Aston Martin as the grid is cleared.
Lamborghini #16 is coming to the pit lane to start, and we will also see
the #7 Toksport WRT Mercedes AMG GT3 with a change of driver. A few cars have had late driver
reshuffles. Axcil Jeffries, the
Zimbabwean driver will share Mercedes #7 with Venezuela’s Oscar Tunjo, Paul
Petit of France, and Marvin Dienst of Germany.
Be on the lookout, too, for the #32 Team WRT Audi caught out
by a red flag during qualifying. Dries
Vanthoor, Charles Weerts, and Kelvin van der Linde are the trio in that
automobile, two Belgian’s and the South African, who is a longtime Audi factory
GT3 driver. The cars roll off behind the
safety car. We are ready to roll here at
Spa. Raffaele Marciello vs. Mirko
Bortolotti on the front row. Use common
sense. Discretion will hopefully be the
better part of valor. The safety car
bunches the field up. They come down to
the Bus Stop, which used to be an actual bus stop on the circuit, but not so
much that way anymore.
The field forms up in two by two, Noah’s ark formation,
timing it to the second so we go green at 4:30 P.M. Here comes the field. 58 strong.
The safety car is in the pit lane.
Who will grab the advantage as they come around La Source? The 24 Hours of Spa for 2021 is about to get
underway. The lights flash green. Punch it!
The 24 Hours of Spa is on!
Marciello leads down the hill ahead of Mirko Bortolotti as they file
into Eau Rouge for the first time of asking.
Luca Stolz and David Pittard are next in the order and so far it is
clean and green. A clean start as
Marciello is weaving to get heat into his Pirelli P Zero tires. Bortolotti and Pittard both want by Marciello,
but again, be wise and back off. This is
just the start of a 24-hour race, lads.
Bentley and Aston Martin battle as we are onboard with the
#93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari, in the middle of the hornet’s nest. Chris Froggatt. We stre still in Noah’s Ark formation through
Pouhon. Ram Racing gets squeezed. This is the #69 Mercedes AMG GT3 with a
quartet of drivers, including Ricky and Rob Collard, Sam De Haan (the starting
driver), and Germany’s Fabian Schiller.
A trio of Englishman, along with Schiller on the driver’s strength. Where is Kelvin van der Linde? He is moving up from 54th place
where he started. David Pittard, late
braking into the final turn, all squirrely, and wouldn’t you know it, he saved
that car!
Luca Stolz wants a piece of David Pittard and wants it
now. Pittard has to go defensive as they
scream through Eau Rouge and Raidillon and up the hull into Les Combes. The BMW is stretching the advantage and Ben
Barnicoat is pressing Luca Stolz now too, look.
Two laps in the bag. So many
drivers want to move up and make progress here.
You really must be cautious.
Allow yourself a margin of error.
Kelvin van der Linde is bish bash boshing his way through this
field. Kelvin van der Linde wants to
pass. That team wants to overtake one
car every 26 minutes if they want to win, but it will only get harder.
The opening lap is very clean. Fred Makowiecki made contact and broke one of
the door mirrors off the #3 Schnabl Engineering Porsche when Frikadelli Racing
withdrew their entry due to the flooding.
Makowiecki, the French Porsche ace sharing with fellow Porsche top
driver’s Michael Christensen of Germany and Dennis Olsen of Norway. Makowiecki stay on track. Kelvin van der Linde has moved to 45th. Raffaelle Marciello is being hotly pursued by
Mirko Bortolotti who is flying right now.
The race is beginning to settle down.
They kick up some dust at the exit of Les Combes. The gap is 5/10ths of a second, turning
through Pouhon, the double lefthander.
Pierre Alexander Jean is ninth in the #107 Bentley.
That car has really good top speed. The bright sunshine we had in pre-race has
gone behind a cloud. Temperatures have
dropped slightly as Kelvin van der Linde has to work on Manuel Lauck in the
#166 yellow and red Porsche. Chris
Froggatt in Pro Am is 43rd overall.
Your pace is fundamentally dictated by the car ahead of you. Whoa!
Chris Froggatt takes a turn on the whirligig through the chicane. He will continue. He perhaps touched the #70 Inception Racing
McLaren as well, currently driven by Jordan Pepper. As the leaders move into Les Combes, poor old
Chris Froggatt is running 55th of the 58 starters. The margin is half a second between Marciello
and Bortolotti into Brussels corner.
Froggatt in the Ferrari hopped the curb, spinning the car.
The pace at the top of the shop is incredibly quick right
now. All of these cars pouring down the
hill as there’s a major battle pack from third on back. Pittard is the cork in the bottle with Luca
Stolz trying to make a pass. He is not
close enough to make a lunge into the chicane at the end of the lap. Ben Barnicoat in the McLaren could indeed
make a move. Ricado Feller, the Swiss
driver in the Silver Cup, he is sixth overall in the Silver Cup #14 Emil Frey
Racing Lamborghini. That is the
Feller/Ineichen/Fontana car, the all Swiss entry. Feller leads Pierre Alexander Jean in the
Bentley in the Silver Cup. The best Audi
is Christopher Mies. Eighth is the
Porsche, the #22 Martini liveried car, the “Bam, Cam, Jam” machine of Earl
Bamber, Matty Campbell, and Matty Jaminet.
Up the Kemmel straight, Alessandro Pier Guidi has a good
look at Earl Bamber, trying his best to make a pass. We know the horsepower and torque the Bentley
has. Into sector two, we can see that
the Bentley might lose a bit of it’s edge.
In Pro Am, the #188 Aston Martin leads for Garage 59 with Germany’s
Marvin Kirchhofer at the wheel of it. Kirchhofer
was an open wheel racer but has now become a quick sports car racer. He is chasing Christopher Haase in the
Sainteloc Audi, the #25 car. That
automobile sees Haase, sharing with fellow German and one-time Formula 1 race
leader Markus Winkelhock, and Patric Niederhauser of Switzerland.
Niederhauser turned in a storming drive here last October to
finish second in this very race to a quickly disintegrating Porsche that was
eating it’s transmission alive before it eventually won. Luca Stolz is trapped now behind David
Pittard. Stolz is being delayed as
Pittard is indeed the cork in the bottle but he is consolidating his
rivals. Luca Stolz is trying to distract. Here comes Ben Barnicoat and the rest of
these chaps rounding out the top ten.
They are waiting for one move to catch Pittard who has run 2:20.9. Ben Barnicoat tries the Mercedes but no dice. Two Emil Frey Lamborghini’s are 15th
and 16th. Franck Perera the
Frenchman ahead of Jack Aitken, the single seater ace from England who has
spent time in Formula 2 and has had a couple of attempts in Formula 1 cars as
well if memory serves me correctly in the last season or so.
The Marciello and Bortolotti battle rages on and these two
Italian’s are two of the best in the world.
These two each have a personality and lots and lots of talent. Mercedes does not want to make a banzai move
early as David Pittard defends and we see Earl Bamber catching Christopher Mies
and fending off Alessandro Pier Guidi in the Ferrari, Bamber, a former overall
24 Hours of Le Mans winner for Porsche.
We have been racing now for 15 minutes and things are maybe starting to
settle down, but it is hard to tell.
Kelvin van der Linde is dropping down the order. He has not gained places either. He is way down in 52nd spot and
has had an off-course excursion someplace.
He maybe cut down a tire.
Louis Machiels in the Ferrari runs ahead of Kelvin van der
Linde. He is closing on the Ferrari
through Bruxelles and Speaker’s Corner.
The Ferrari inches away just a shade.
Kelvin van der Linde cannot yet get on terms with the Ferrari, but he
does make a pass and Louis Machiels gives Kelvin van der Linde the space for a
pass. He lost boatloads of time. It’s a snakes and ladders game. Kelvin van der Linde had to reboot the car, a
Control, Alt, Delete moment. Mercedes #89 moves through as well, the second
AKKA ASP Mercedes. That car being shared
by Lucas Auer, the Austrian sports car and open wheel driver, Timur
Boguslavskiy from Russia, and Brazilian Felipe Fraga.
12th in the overall is the #95 all Pro lineup
Aston Martin for Nicki Thiim who is the current driver at the start of the
race. Ross Gunn and Marco Sorensen are
his co-driver’s. A bevy of cars race
downhill through Fangnes and into Campus.
Not to be confused, but Fangnes and the Piff Paff, on this circuit, they
are the same corner, with two different names.
Eight laps, 35 miles complete.
Are we there yet? Not even
close! Hold on for the ride. Pierre Alexander Jean, Lucas Auer, Nicki
Thiim, they battle. There are tons of
star drivers in this motor race. The
inclination of a racing driver is to win on the first lap but now, we have a
rhythm. Christopher Mies is driving
defensively against Alessandro Pier Guidi.
Pier Guidi cuts to the inside of Raidillon. Mies has no option but to let Alessandro Pier
Guidi make the pass. Track limits can
indeed have a bearing on an overtake as Kelvin van der Linde is now up to 51st
place and he did run slow with no power to recycle the car. All the power in the car was off while he
restarted it. Since it happened so
early, the fear is that the car could lose power again. Van der Line did a recycle of the electronics
which is exactly what you are supposed to do.
The speed chart sees the Bentley and Aston Martin fastest at 270
kilometers an hour with the Lamborghini, and BMW at 269 kilometers an hour and
the Aston Martin at 268 kilometers an hour.
So, Pierre Alexander Jean and Marvin Kirchhofer run fastest while we see
Jens Klingman and Bertran Baguette next up followed by Valentin Haase-Clot.
The Bentley flies through Eau Rouge and they have the grunt,
the low-end torque and horsepower. Full
Course Yellow in ten seconds. 5, 4, 3,
2, 1. Full Course Yellow now. The Lamborghini is slow, but we don’t know
who it is. This was an immediate
call. What is going on? There is some debris on the road and there is
no obvious reason yet about why this Full Curse Yellow is out as everyone has
slowed to 50 kilometers per hour. There
could be a BMW off the road in the middle sector and it could be the #35
Walkenhorst entry. The safety car is on
standby. Who? Where?
That is what we need to find out.
Everyone running at 50 kilometers an hour.
You can bet your bottom dollar this won’t be the last Full
Course Yellow of the motor race. Several
drivers are diving for the pit lane for service under Full Course Yellow at the
end of ten laps. Ricardo Feller, Martin
Tomczyk, David Pittard. Tomczyk in the
#35 is still running. We thought it was
a transponder issue on the car. But
no. Lamborghini going for tires
early. Drivers stay behind the wheel and
reset the stint time. A stint here at Spa
is 65 minutes from the pit out line.
Sandy Mitchell and Kelvin van der Linde have pitted as well. Mitchell is driving for Barwell Motorsport in
their Lamborghini. They want a win in
the Pro-Am class.
Both AWS Crowdstrike Mercedes cars have been in the pit lane
for regular service. More cars now
coming to the lane. Will there be
necessity of strategy adjustments? It is
a team call, totally. Stick to a plan in
24-hour races. Two messages. One to say this incident has Kevin Estre,
Davide Rigon, and Frank Perera. We are
going to see a half hour’s-worth of Full Course yellow as Raffaele Marciello
leads the motor race with 11 laps on the board as Luca Stolz inherits third
place. Two cars have gone off the road
at the top of Raidillon, but the doctors will want to check them out. Raffaele Marciello stays on the road. AKKA ASP are probably comfortable with their
current situation.
Your top six drivers at this juncture are Raffaele
Marciello, Mirko Bortolotti, Luca Stolz, Ben Barnicoat, Alessandro Pier Guidi, and
Christopher Mies. The leaders choose to
stay on track. Working lap 12, so we
have gone 52 miles. Some major names
have been caught up in this incident at the top of Raidillon. Jack Aitken, Frank Perera, Davide Rigon, and
Kevin Estre are those four drivers. We
are going to have a long Full Course Yellow, half an hour at least. Recalculate the strategy and the teams can
chill out for a bit. Emil Frey Racing
has had two cars involved in this incident that they will have to fix to be
honest.
Brendon Iribe has now taken over the Inception Racing
McLaren, car #70. With that Chris
Froggatt spin we saw at the start, was there another car involved? We saw a bit of argy bargy, some hip and
shoulder, in the early laps. Onto lap 13
are the leaders and Ben Barnicoat brings the #38 Jota Sport McLaren to pit
lane. Teams are using the opportunity
provided by the Full Course Yellow for fuel and new boots. BMW in the lane, too, the #10 Boutsen Ginion
car. Jens Klingmann, the German BMW
contracted driver is at the wheel, sharing with fellow German Jens Liebhauser,
Karim Ojjeh from Saudi Arabia, and Yann Zimmer from Switzerland.
Kelvin van der Linde, and WRT pit for standard service along
with reufeling in the #32 Audi sponsored by Skechers shoes. The #11 Kessel Racing Ferrari 488 GT3 is also
in. David Fumanelli, one of three
Italians on the Gdriver’s strength, will get out, and we shall see who gets
into that car. New tires, and fuel. Not sure who is going to drive that #11
car. Bend yourself into the car and then
fasten the safety harness. The other
possible drivers on the team who could have gotten into that Kessel Racing
Ferrari are Tim Kohmann from Germany, and/or David Fumanelli’s countrymen,
Italian’s Francesco Zollo or Giorgio Roda.
The Full Course Yellow continues to clean up the mess. Earl Bamber and Pirre Aexander Jean go
by. Jean leads the Silver Cup. This is the only Bentley in the field. It is the lone ranger. Alessandro Pier Guidi meanwhile, has moved
past Ben Barnicoat after he pitted the McLaren.
Work continues as the marshals clean up the cars at the top of
Raidillon. Raffaele Marciello was a
driver in single seater’s for a long time and was on the verge of being a
Ferrari development driver in the hopes of getting to Formula 1. But the man has found his niche driving these
GT3 cars for Mercedes Benz. Marciello is
a tall bloke and in formula car racing, height is an issue. You can be too tall for a modern open wheel
car, but we are delighted to see him here in GT3 racing.
Do we see moisture on the road someplace? You can carry windscreen tear offs on these
GT3 cars, but you are limited to just four tear off sheets and so, the logic is
that you would replace a dirty tear off once every six hours. 14 laps now complete, 61 miles. We have the “grunt and go” cars which are the
front engine machines like the Bentley, the Mercedes, and Aston Martin, or the
mid and rear engine bullets like the Porsche, the McLaren, and the Ferrari. Marvin Kirchhofer brings the #188 Pro Am
Aston Martin to the pit lane and he should be making a driver change, and yes,
he does. That is a short first
stint. Maybe they are cycling all
drivers into the car early. One stint to
cycle everyone through and then start doing double and triple stints later into
the evening.
It is good to get all four drivers cycled through in the
daytime. Track conditions change all the
time. They are racing for a class win
and not the overall win even though, like we said earlier, each of these cars
is a GT3 car. We watch a replay as Mirko
Bortolotti was able to pull awayn from David Pittard at the start. He is extending the gap coming up the hill,
out of the valley. We are going to
restart this race in half an hour. Some
great action before we got to the Full Course Yellow and Raffaele Marciello
continues to lead as we watch Martin Tomczyk get bottled up down the hill and
back up. This track is old school, so it
is very narrow.
Yuki Namoto gains a place in the #19 Lamborghini over Chris
Froggatt in the #93 Ferrari and the McLaren and BMW showed great speed as we
were watching that replay of the start.
Raffaele Marciello leads as the #159 Silver Cup Garage 59 Aston Martin
pits for scheduled service and a driver change.
Frenchman Valentin Haase-Clot was the driver at the start. He will hand over to one of three other
drivers on the team. It will be either
Tuomas Tujula of Finland, Alex MacDowall of England (an experienced British
Touring Car Championship campaigner), or Nicolai Kjaergaard from Denmark. Will we see later in the race if Walkenhorst
Motorsports made a worthwhile move? The
Aston Martin is hesitant to leave the pit box but it is now back on the
road.
Quite a mix of different cars at the top of the shop
earlier. Raffaelle Marciello leads in
the Mercedes followed by Mirko Bortolotti in the Lamborghini. Luca Stolz in
another Mercedes is followed by Alessandro Pier Guidi in the Ferrari. He has Christopher Mies behind him in the
Audi, and in sixth place it is Earl Bamber in the Porsche. Seventh through tenth spot has these drivers
and cars. Pierre-Alexander Jean in the
Bentley, Lucas Auer in a Mercedes, Nicki Thiim in an Aston Martin, and in tenth
place, Nico Muller in an Audi.
Raffaele Marciello leads the motor race, currently. Walkenhorst BMW have pitted from the leading
group, but we will only know how their strategy works out much later on. Kelvin van der Linde pitted and stayed at the
wheel of his Audi. Up through Raidillon,
there is still work on the barriers going on.
Again, stint maximum is 65 minutes unless there is a Full Course Yellow
or a safety car. There is a five-minute
grace period under yellow at 70 minutes for a stint. Now, why on earth is Nico Muller closing
right up on the back of the Aston Martin, especially at this early stage of the
motor race?
There’s very little airflow going into the engine to keep
the temperatures in check. Fabian
Schiller leads in Pro Am in the #69 Mercedes.
That is a purplish pink, a magenta car.
He has Mikkel Pedersen behind and Maximilian Buhk up ahead. Buhk, a former winner of this race, in the
GT3 era, he is driving the #50 HubAuto Mercedes AMG GT3 sharing with Maximilian
Gotz and Nicky Catsburg. Two German’s
and a Dutchman. This car is in a retro
livery of the Mercedes sedan that won in class here in 1971 in the hands of
Hans Heyer and Clemens Schickentanz.
Maximilian Buhk and Maximilian Gotz won the 24 Hours of Spa
in 2013 with a Mercedes SLS AMG alongside the legend, Bernd Schneider, multiple
DTM champion for Mercedes. Manuel Lauck
is leadin the Am class standings in the #166 Haegeli by T2 Racing Porsche 911
GT3R, a car that we have also seen in Creventic Racing. That paint scheme is very familiar. Yellow and red, what I would call the
raspberry and custard livery. Mikkel
Pedersen meanwhile, comes to the pit lane in the #56 Dinamic Motorsports
Porsche. Pirelli has a massive
commitment for slick and wet weather tires for the 24 hour race and also for
the support races.
They have made new compounds and tires specifically for this
race here at Spa, the opening race of the Intercontinental GT Challenge. We also see at La Source, Audi has their
giant balloon, a hot air balloon used for advertising and promotional
purposes. 16 laps, 70 miles completed,
as we have Full Course Yellow still on the road as Ben Barnicoat in the #38
McLaren is 26th overall behind David Pittard in the BMW, as the cars
run nose to tail at 50 kilometers an hour.
There is very little airflow into the radiators. Race cars and their engines have an optimum
temperature they like to operate at. Too
hot, they won’t function properly. Too
cold, they won’t function properly.
We are going to have to wait at least 20 minutes before the
marshals feel it is safe to turn these boys loose once again. Mirko Bortolotti puts a quick blast of heat
into his tires while Luca Stolz pops out from behind maybe to grab cooler air
for the radiator of the Mercedes, so the thing doesn’t overheat. There’s no real chance of the cars overheating
at this stage at all, even though they are running slowly behind the safety
car. Maybe that was a boredom
buster. Bentley #107 is in the pit lane. Routine service for Pierre Alexander
Jean. We had some cloud over the track
but the sun is back out again as we are headed to the hour mark in this race
and many people are pitting. Stop on the
hour in every hour of the race.
Nicki Thiim and Nico Muller are nose to tail in eighth and
ninth place overall. Clemens Schmid is
now in pit lane for scheduled service aboard the #16 GRT Grasser Racing Team
Lamborghini, the car that crashed in night practice and had to be
repaired. It was a herculean task for
the team to get the car repaired. Most
of the damage was clearly bodywork and suspension. They got the pickup points realigned for the
suspension and got the bodywork redone.
Typical Spa weather of course. On
one side of the mountain, dark clouds, and on the other side, bright sunshine.
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