The gap now is 40 seconds between the #90 Mad Panda Mercedes and the #159 Garage 59 Aston Martin. Everywhere you look on the circuit is full of debris and rubber clag all over the place. More rain may come at the end of the motor race. We shall see. We are now looking at the #32 WRT Audi and are about to hear from WRT team boss Vincent Vosse. Vosse says with eight hours left, nothing is certain. The strategy will play a major part in the race. He acknowledges how quick the Ferrari and the Aston Martin are, even though Audi has had a race that has been clean and gone according to plan. Vincent Vosse is a man to keep his cards close to his chest. But you know that the team has an air of confidence.
We will soon be reaching the last quarter of this race. 54th to second, by the #32 Audi, playing the strategy game. Now then, Race Director Alain Adam announces yet another drive through penalty for track limits abuse. That is for the #99 Attempto Racing Audi. We’ve seen this car get pinged for track limits abuse earlier in the race and you would have heard calls for that if you were with us yesterday. We are also watching the #911 Herberth Motorsports Porsche, currently in the hands of Turkish driver Antares Au. Manuel Lauck, the German, at the wheel of the #166 Haegeli By T2 Racing Porsche also had a spin in the final corner.
That automobile, the berries and custard special, has had a fraught race so far. Manuel Lauck was tagged by another driver who was diving for the pit lane to serve a penalty. That was in fact Florian Scholze. I shall check and see which car he’s driving. It’s been a long night. So, Nicklas Nielsen continues in the race lead. Nielsen turns his way up through Les Combes. This team is owned by former Ferrari GT racer Andrea Piccini. Ferrari, they have been quick here at the Spa 24 Hours before but have always been fragile. But, they lead at six hours. Ka ching. More points in the bank. They led at the 12 hour mark, at halfway. Ka ching. More points in the bank. Can they take it all the way?
John Wartique, the Belgian, speaking of Ferrari, but another team (AF Corse), still leads Pro-Am Cup aboard the #52 car. If Ferrari were to win today, that would make the Tifosi happy! The German marques have dominated this motor race now for the better part of a decade, and maybe it is time for another brand and another nation to stand atop the podium and score the big trophy, the Coupe du Roi. We shall see in less than eight hours. Wartique and company have spun out and had other small issues. The driver’s side mirror is gone. Ferrari has been doing well in this race thus far.
Ah. Another drive through penalty for, you guessed it, abuse of track limits. This time it is the #38 Jota Sport McLaren, a car we saw in contention earlier, in the overnight hours as dawn was coming. It is a Ferrari benefit in the Pro-Am class with both Miguel Molina and Eddie Cheever III. Still in the fight in the class. The #38 has had several penalties throughout this race. Everyone is driving at the limit. Well, well. The penalty was just cancelled. Very interesting. Maybe that will disappear from the record. Race Control will now move on to penalize the #911 Porsche. Antares Au runs 32nd in the overall.
Poor old Rob Bell and company, they were on the bubble, and thankfully the Race Director has changed his mind. We are seeing two cars now, that have incurred the most track limit penalties in this race. Franco Colapinto at the wheel of the #30 WRT Audi and Ivan Jacoma in the #23 Huber Motorsport Porsche. Miguel Molina, the vastly experienced Spaniard now runs second in the Pro-Am class in the AF Corse Ferrari #53, the sister car. Molina drives through Pouhon corner. Molina sharing with Ducan Cameron, Rino Mastronardi, and Matt Griffin.
This whole team, all four drivers, are quick in Ferrari’s. Next up in Pro-Am is the #66 Audi, the Pro-Am Audi Sport Team Attempto Audi R8. That shows Christopher Mies at the controls, but it may have a transponder glitch and we may be seeing a different driver in that automobile right now. Eddie Cheever is up next in the #93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari. Cheever turns into Campus and goes up through Stavelot, feathering the throttle through Paul Frere Curve, and into Blanchimont. Directly behind the #93 Ferrari which slides through the awkward final corner, it is the #70 Inception Racing McLaren. Nicklas Nielsen continues in the lead. Alessandro Pier Guidi has done some real he man stints.
He says that they have been collecting the points and continuing to push. Pier Guidi is ready to go for another double stint coming up in a half an hour. There’s still a really long way to go, and things can still change. They are just playing the points game and seeing what will happen. They are here to win the race. We are still a long, long way to the checkers. You’ve cracked the first half of the race but are deep in the middle of the second half. The leading Ferrari, turning out of the La Source hairpin, has now run 373 laps, 1,623 miles. Tires at the ready for a pit stop for the #93 Sky Tempesta Ferrari. Everything is looking good for Iron Lynx. He leads the motor race now by 17.7 seconds over Dries Vanthoor in the #32 WRT Audi.
Rob Bell in the McLaren is eighth overall, running in the same time bracket as the leading Ferrari in the 2:21 range. Correction, as we have a transponder issue too for the #166 Porsche, and Dennis Busch is at the wheel of it. Busch, the German is the second driver listed on the entry. So he is back in for another stint. We have an international driver lineup and an international audience. Great to have this car on the grid here at Spa and we don’t see it in GT World Challenge Europe. These guys usually race in the Crventic 24 Hour Series. Drive through penalties for track limits to the #11 and #66 cars. #66 is the Attempto Audi in fourth place. The #11 Ferrari, that is in 25th overall, the Kessel Racing Ferrari.
We saw smoke earlier from the #25 Audi for Audi Sport Team Sainteloc. It’s nothing serious. The #66 Audi has also had a transponder issue and we cannot tell which of the three drivers is in the car now. It is either Chrsitopher Mies, Dennis Marschall, or Mattia Drudi. We will assume it is Christopher Mies, a very experienced Audi driver as they dive into Eau Rouge for the 375th time. Alexandre Imperatori has moved around Maro Engel. Porsche vs. Mercedes. A lot of the German brands have had issues in this race. Maro Engel has the best placed Mercedes in 11th overall. The best of the Porsche’s is Maxime Martin running fifth overall in the #47 KCMG entry.
As for BMW, they’re done and out of contention. 38th place in the overall is the closest BMW you’ll find and that is the much beleaguered #10 Boutsen Ginion car we talked of earlier in the race. The best finish for an Italian brand in this motor race dates back in recent memory all the way to 2008. That is when Maserati won for Vitaphone Racing with Michael Bartels, Andrea Bertolini, Stephane Sarrazin, and Eric van de Poele. I also should correct myself on an earlier statement. 1954 was not the last Ferrari win here at Spa in the 24 hours. The most recent Ferrari triumph came in 2004 in the GT1 era.
That was a Ferrari 550 Maranello driven to victory by a quartet of drivers from Italy and Switzerland. Enzo Calderari, Lilian Bryner, Luca Capellari, and Fabrizio Gollin. Enzo Calderari and Lilian Bryner may be familiar to American sports car racing fans if you’ve followed the sport for a long period of time because they won in class at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, I believe, in a Porsche 911 RSR in around 1996 or so, fully a quarter century ago already! My gracious! How time doth fly! That was a front engine Ferrari, a Ferrari 550 V12 built by Prodrive.
Drive through penalty for car #14, the surviving Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini for the all-Swiss crew of Alex Fontana, Rolf Ineichen, and Ricardo Feller. Drive through penalties for abusing track limits, coming thick and fast. #33, abusing track limits. That’s the Rinaldi Racing Ferrari 488 GT3 for Benjamin Hites, David Perel, and Fabrizio Crestani. Maxime Martin is now in the #47 KCMG Porsche and of course, Laurens Vanthoor is no longer in this car. He is hurt after he collided on his scooter with an All-Terrain Vehicle. So the duty is now left to Maxime Martin and Nick Tandy to put the pieces together.
Vanthoor was on a scooter and has face is bruised up and busted up. He will be very disappointed. The strategists shall be on top of their drive time minute by minute. The strategy will be up in the air and the race tacticians for that team will really have to go for it. Maxime Martin is a racing hero here in Belgium, his home country. This Porsche runs fifth in the overall right now. Martin needs to be back on the lead lap and right now he is a lap down. It will be very difficult for him to get the lap back. That’s the downside of one of these races. You just cannot hope to get a lap back. The Full Course Yellow and safety car period just didn’t come at the right time for some teams.
One of the cars that lost out is the now retired #88 AKKA ASP Mercedes with that broken shock absorber. There were sparks all over the place, screaming through Eau Rouge at high speed. Another drive through penalty for Huber Motorsports, the #23 Porsche we have talked about. #33 cuts across a car to head to the lane for serving the penalty. Yikes! That’s a situation that could indeed cause an incident. Max Hofer, the Austrian, driving for Attempto Racing will gain a spot in Silver Cup, currently fourth in class aboard the #99 Audi R8. Hofer will move ahead of Benja Hites. Max Hofer, another experienced GT racer in European championship and German Championship competition, as well as in TCR Europe.
Track limits are being fully enforced in modern motor racing more than they ever have been, and some drivers just still don’t get the message that they must stay within the boundaries. A decade ago, 20 years ago, we never heard a word about track limits. The track is defined by white lines. You can run with two wheels on the curb, but all four wheels is a penalty. Track limits are here to stay. They won’t be going away anytime soon. Ten track limit warnings against the #33 car and 11 against the #23. Don’t talk to me about track limits because I get feisty.
Benja Hites is now 16th in the overall. Hites has been passed by Hofer. Drive through penalty now for the #2 GetSpeed Mercedes AMG GT3 for speeding in pit lane. Eighth is now Rob Bell in McLaren #38. He has run behind the leading Ferrari, the #51 car. He has gained on Nicklas Nielsen even though the two of them are not in any way racing each other. If the McLaren had not been down the order, they surely would have been in the fight for overall honors. Now, a quick word about retired cars that we no longer see on track. The #3 Porsche of which Michael Christensen was one of the drivers, they are out of the race after contact with the barriers at Eau Rouge. That was the #3 Schnabl Engineering Porsche 911 GT3R of Dennis Olsen, Michael Christensen, and Fred Makowiecki. We also lost Porsche #22, the GPX Martini Racing entry for Matt Campbell, Earl Bamber, and Matthieu Jaminet. The front axle broke and that led to a steering failure on the car.
Now we see the #95 Aston Martin in the pit lane. That car is third in the overall and has the fastest lap of this motor race thus far. We lost the #34 Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M6 GT3, the winning car and team from here at Spa back in 2018. David Pittard the Brit was driving it at the time, sharing with Sheldon van der Linde of South Africa (Kelvin van der Linde’s brother), and Marco Wittmann of Germany. We also lost the sister Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW, the #35 car with suspension dramas. Timo Glock, Martin Tomczyk, and Thomas Neubauer, they’re out of it.
We lost the #19 Orange 1 FFF Lamborghini due to crash damage and the lights not working. So, the quartet of Bertrand Baguette of Belgium, Hiroshi Yamaguchi of Japan, Stefano Constantini of Italy, and Phil Keen from England, have long since departed the motor race. An alternator needed to be changed on the #54 Dinamic Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3R. We wonder if after spending more than an hour in pit lane, if Matteo Cairoli from Italy, along with Klaus Bachler from Austria and Christian Engelhart from Germany, if those boys will get back out. Clemens Schmid also has damage that we saw sustained earlier to the #16 GRT Grasser Racing Team Lamborghini. So, it may be day done for Schmid and co-drivers Tim Zimmerman, Kikko Galbiati, and Alberto Maria Di Folco.
So all the top three and most cars have done their technical pit stops. So we are just looking now at a series of routine pit stops including four Pirelli tires all the way around on the #25 Audi Sport Team Sainteloc Audi R8 as it sits in the lane. Check that. It looks like #25, is now undergoing it’s technical stop because they are fueling the car and new wheels and tires have not been put on it yet. There are the dollies being put under the car and so, now they will serve their technical pit stop. Drive through penalty for the #89 AKKA ASP Mercedes for (yes, you’ve guessed it), abusing track limits. Lucas Auer at the controls.
Audi can now release the caliper from the hub to remove the brake disc without having to take the quick disconnect lines off. Brake changes used to be a lot longer if you had to bleed the system out or put a clamp on the brake lines so you wouldn’t lose brake fluid and subsequently brake pressure. More importantly you didn’t want air in the brake lines when you reconnected everything. Maxime Martin is in the lane now too. Dennis Lind in eighth spot at the wheel of the #37 Audi Sport Team WRT Audi R8, will gain another spot. More penalties for track limits. This time, the #93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari. Eddie Cheever III., will lose third place in Pro-Am to the very rapid Sandy Mitchell. Mitchell at the keyboard of the #77 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini.
The Pro-Am leading #52 Ferrari is in the lane for service. John Wartique got out. And so there has likely already been a driver change as a crewman removes yet another tear off from the windscreen on that car. Maxime Martin is in the lane as well in the Porsche, the #47 KCMG car as a mechanic is clambering atop the bonnet to clean the windscreen, look. It will be Martin and Tandy having to press on to the end of the motor race. The sun rises in the east with loads of cloud cover hovering above Spa. So, there’s no rain in the short term. We may see rain before the end of the race this afternoon. Mirko Bortolotti is fourth looking to get back on the lead lap. An incident between the #63 Lamborghini and the #3 Porsche will be investigated after the race, so, seven and a half hours from now.
Now
we know which car in the night the #3 machine tagged. If it is a post-race investigation, that will
take longer. The car came to a
standstill at the bottom of Eau Rouge. The
stewards are working out flat out like lizards drinking. Drivers with the GPS mapping of the cars on the
circuit, have an invisible wall around them, a wall that they cannot see. It does exist. It is a similar deal to the timing
transponder. There’s a whole team of
marshals going through track limits in another office. A beam is broken to tell you if you are
outside of track limits. We could be on
for a track limits violations record.
Ah. We talked about Florian Scholze earlier and I had totally forgotten which car he was driving. Well, it is the #2 GetSpeed Mercedes of course, that he shares with Jim Pla, Olivier Grotz, and Nico Bastian. Alexandre Imperatori is right behind Florian Scholze in the #18 KCMG Porsche. That car dropped in time early but is coming back into the race. Imerpatori just about slows it down and almost gets caught out in the final corner as the Mercedes’, some of them, hit the pit lane. Speaking of Mercedes, now we watch the #4 car for Mercedes-AMG Team HRT currently in tenth spot with Maro Engel at the controls. This is a car we expected to see doing a wee bit better.
They just have not been in contention. More track limits abusers, and both, Mercedes AMG GT3’s. We have the #87 AKKA ASP machine and the #69 Ram Racing car as well. Iron Lynx are ready to pit again. They have had a bittersweet race. They are leading with the #51 and of course their sister car #71 went out in a colossal crash yesterday. Davide Rigon, the top driver in that automobile, he is back at the circuit watching, but with a back brace on as he took a hard lick yesterday. Glad he is here at the track again. Pit stop time for the race leader. A driver change it looks like. Kevin Estre is also back here at the track. Ditto for the #32 WRT Audi of Dries Vanthoor. The top two cars enter the pit lane on lap 382, 1,662 miles completed.
The stints have been 27 or so laps for both the leading cars. So, the order will remain the same here after these pit stops. 27 laps = a stint of 117 and a half miles. Drive through penalty for the #10 BMW. Nick Tandy says Laurens Vanthoor has had an accident in the paddock overnight after colliding with something on his scooter and faceplanting into the tarmac. He is OK. But his face is a mess. So, Nick Tandy and Maxime Martin ought to be OK on drive time. It is a maximum of 14 hours for one driver with a three hour and 15-minute stint length before an hour’s rest. The 24 Hours of Spa is one of the toughest on the driver.
Tracks like Le Mans and Daytona have spots on the road where the driver can rest and ease up on the driving through a certain portion of the lap. That’s not the case here at Spa, however. Everything is running well at KCMG with Nick Tandy and Maxime Martin. Just to add to the drama, a fan reports in there is light drizzle on the downhill run to Eau Rouge just past the endurance pit lane. A couple of Lamborghini’s are coming out of the pit lane here. Marco Mapelli is one and Sandy Mitchell is the other. Mapelli is down a lap now but the two drive through penalties they’ve had, have put them on the back foot.
The gap between the leading #51 Ferrari and the second place #32 Audi has ballooned to 14 seconds. We know Ferrari’s are fast, but it is amazing how strong they’ve been so far, especially the #51. We’ve seen Ferrari’s in winning places but never going for the overall win. In 2021, this race has had a different feel. The Iron Lynx Ferrari is at the performance edge, and the car is running perfectly. They’ve found a rhythm. Could another Full Course Yellow allow the Audi to close in again? The Iron Lynx team is new at this level. Oh wow! We have breaking development! The #2 GetSpeed Mercedes, which was just in the lane for a penalty, has now retired. Nico Bastian was at the wheel when the car was withdrawn and retired from this motor race.
The
gap is now up to 15.8 seconds. I toculd
be traffic and Dries Vanthoor, the Belgian, leads Marco Sorensen by 37 seconds
while Maxime Martin is a lap down in the top placed Porsche followed by Marco
Mapelli, Dennis Lind, and Christopher Mies.
Only three cars are on the lead lap.
Game over for Matteo Cairoli and the #54 Dinamic Motorsports
Porsche. Cairoli and co-driver’s Klaus
Bachler and Christian Engelhart, out of race with alternator trouble. 389 laps complete, 1,693 miles. Alessandro Pier Guidi leads Dries Vanthoor while
Fabian Schiller in the Ram Racing Mercedes has a drive through penalty. Anyone who has lost a lap, might not be able
to make it up unless we get rain in these last seven hours or so.
Christopher Mies braved the rain showers yesterday, on slicks! That was a brave drive. That’s taking a lot of risks you as the driver cannot control. Maxime Martin is ahead of Marco Mapelli by only a second and a half. Mapelli has a good pace. The gap is closing as Maxime Martin is being eaten up by Senore Mapelli. The Porsche with Martin at the controls will pit earlier than will the Lamborghini. The gap between first and second has now grown to 16.8 seconds. The Ferrari is quicker than the opposition, but it is also using less fuel. Speaking of Ferrari’s, Chris Froggatt in the #93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari 488 GT3, he is in fact on the last track limits warning that automobile has before he has to serve a drive through penalty and make his way to ye olde sin bin.
The gap is shrinking between Martin and Mapelli. 9/10ths of a second. So, Mapelli ought to pass any second now. He must wonder where he can find a place to pass. They sweep through Eau Rouge and up the hill. Martin has not lost any time. Into Les Combes, and you’ve not seen a change. Maybe just 2/10ths of a second at most. Martin has lapped traffic in the way, a Ferrari. Maxime Martin will be peeved by having that Ferrari in the way. The Balance of Performance means clearing a backmarker that is well driven, is really tought. Mapelli tries easing through that door, as the doppelganger into Fangnes. No dice there, mate.
He sweeps down past the Ferrari into Campus corner. A net gain for Mapelli. They were delayed by contact and their two drive through penalties. Avoidable contact, but the Schnabl Racing Porsche team has filed a protest to look at the incident when this race ends. The Lambo is a lap down to the Ferrari and a second behind. The Ferrari has the pace and in the process is using less petrol. Mapelli is now within striking distance of the Porsche. Martin is a former Spa 24 Hours winner and he won’t let the Lamborghini pass without a fight.
Martin gets balked through Speaker’s corner and down into Pouhon. Can he slide down the inside? No. It is too big a risk to lob the car into Fangnes another time. This is a four wheeled chess game. Too much of a good thing, maybe. Everyone is on the limit. No one is leaving a damn thing on the table here. The lead Ferrari is doing things that are spot on, and the other drivers and other cars are just driving the wheels off their cars and can’t get by. However, you just never know what is around the bend in these endurance races. No one can predict anything. You just have to survive, and that is why this whole deal is called endurance racing.
18.8 seconds is the gap from first to second now. Mapelli has caught the Poresche but he cannot pass. The Lambo may be faster than the Porsche, but the cars are so evenly matched on acceleration and straight-line performance. Mapelli si doing all in his power to find the advantage and just can’t make it work. Almost a move made for Marco Mapelli. Martin must go defensive. He really does, as they scream down the hill and back up the other side. That move didn’t work the right way. We have an interview coming up with Mirko Bortolotti and we’ll see what he has to say about all of this.
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