Over the bumps, flying downhill into Eau Rouge and Raidillon, flashing the lights to slower cars, but they are all pretty much of equal performance for GT3s. Meantime, in the garage is still the #19 Lamborghini with Phil Keen at the wheel of it. That car is still being repaired after clouting the tire wall. Lots of red and yellow curb paint, or a Pirelli banner is what it took a clatter to. Bertrand Baguette is sharing with Phil Keen, Stefano Constantini, and Hiroshi Hamaguchi. It’s been a tough race for these boys. Just tank tape the bodywork into place is the methodology they want to use. But spend extra time to get it right. Don’t rush the job.
We still see the cars screaming up through Eau Rouge. In daylight we could see precisely what happens. Harder to do so in the darkness as we are past midnight. Normally it would be raining now. Thank heavens it happened earlier on in the motor race. We had 58 starters and four went out in the earlier incident, but there are still much of the field out pounding around. Nowadays, for the last decade, we have had single formula racing in GT3. If you’d gone to this race in the heyday of the ‘70s and ‘80s you would have seen several classes when this event was for touring cars. There were top class cars with big engines (BMW’s, Ford Capri’s, Ford Sierra Cosworth’s, Nissan Skylines’s), and then, a class for small hatchback cars with nowhere near the horsepower.
We have a car crabbing it’s way ‘round the speedway right now. It looks like both a tire is flat, and the right rear suspension is totally busted. This could be Clemens Schmid at the wheel of the #16 GRT Grasser Racing Team Lamborghini Huracan GT3. This is an automobile we saw in strife earlier in the race and it seems every time we find them in the order, something has gone pear shaped. Schmid is 41st in the overall right now in the 58-car field. It seems to be sitting OK. Poor old Tim Zimmerman went off the road in qualifying at the Raidillon crest. Clemens Schmid is a lucky, lucky, lucky luck boy, getting away with that off.
Mirko Bortolotti now leads by 12 some odd seconds over Robin Frijns and I believe Come Ledogar. Marco Wittman is next up in fourth in the BMW. Lamborghini, ahead of Audi, Ferrari, and BMW. Lamborghini, Audi, Audi, BMW, Ferrari I think is the correct order. Nikki Thiim has the #95 Garage 59 Aston Martin up to fifth place. Good going, mate. Ferrari #51 has lost ground after his penalty and has to catch the Aston Martin up, with 17 seconds. We have a battle emerging now, look, for 25th spot, down the order, between the sister Garage 59 Aston Martin #159 and the Toksport WRT Mercedes AMG GT3. Oscar Tunjo is catching the Danish driver, Nicolai Kjaergaard. Traffic on the road is unreal. Tunjo is holding off the Aston. We can see the bright indicator lights on the side of these cars. We have a message that rain could come when we get into the morning hours at 8AM. Now, that just tells you, don’t trust the weatherman or woman because these are only predictions. What will nature have in store? We’ll have to wait for the darkness to subside and vanish before finding out. Forecasting is only a prediction. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Bortolotti leads van der Linde, and we have a schedule for sunrise at 6:04 A.M.
Other class leaders to keep an eye on. Silver Cup led by who else, but Mad Panda Motorsport in the #90 Mercedes AMG GT3. Rik Breukers is the bloke currently behind the wheel. He took that car over from his co-driver Ricardo Sanchez, from Mexico. Next up in Pro Am is the CMR Bentley #107 with Nelson Panciatici of France at the wheel. In Pro Am, the #52 AF Corse Ferrari continues to lead the class and Andrea Bertolini is currently driving. He took over from Alessio Rovera, 17th overall. Matteo Cressoni is now in the #93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari. In the Am class, well, that’s the Porsche with the berries and custard paint scheme, the Haegell by T2 Racing #166 with Manuel Lauck driving, running in 43rd spot.
His closest competitor is in 45th place overall, Nicky Leutwiler in the #23 Huber Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3R, a car that has had a fraught race to this point. Back to the Phil Keen situation, looking at the left front corner of the car that is damaged, but there’s work done in the passenger side cockpit. The team is replacing the ECU, the Engine Control Unit, and they are downloading data from the car into a laptop computer to analyze it. It is underneath the passenger side footwell of the car. The engineers and telemetry specialists say, “wait, don’t button the tires up yet.”
Did the headlamps fail? That’s likely it could be. There must be an electrical issue on that car. He was on his own before the lights went out. This is only a theory. The pit reporters and cameramen are having to run up and down between the F1 pits and the heritage endurance pits which are narrower. The tires are colder once they get through the heritage pit lane. The team want to be at the base of the heritage pit lane, which is the old one for Formula 1, so the tires are hotter when the cars fly through Eau Rouge. Just to clarify, the top pit lane is the current F1 pit lane and the bottom half is the old pit lane which was used for F1, for the touring cars when they raced in this event, and for the sports cars when they race here either nowadays in the FIA World Endurance Championship, or in the past when we saw Group C prototypes and even before that, with the likes of the Porsche 917 and Ferrari 512 race here back in the early, early 1970s.
Do you want a bigger garage, or hotter tires? Team WRT always take the last of the F1 garages. The first one in the pit lane, it is harder to see from. We’ve talked about Rik Breukers’ lead in the Silver division and he still has it. He is on a Saturday night cruise here at Spa. Race Vision powered by AWS is giving us top speeds through Eau Rouge again. Thomas Neubauer in the #35 BMW is fastest of all at 248 clicks followed by Nelson Panciatici in the Bentley at 247, and tied at 246, we have the McLaren’s of the two Ollie’s, Oliver Wilkinson, and Oliver Milroy, followed by the Aston Martin of Charlie Eastwood. So, these drivers are easily pulling over 170 miles an hour up the rise at Eau Rouge.
No Ferrari’s or Lamborghini’s are top in the speed traps for some reason. That’s strange. The cars just fly uphill between Eau Rouge and Raidillon. So, Phil Keen is still in the garage as the team repairs it. Drive through for car #70. That’s Ollie Milroy’s McLaren sharing with Jordan Pepper, Kevin Madsen, and Brendon Iribe. Mirko Bortolotti is two seconds clear of Kelvin van der Linde, and they are ready to pit and change drivers. The next driver is suited and booted in his helmet and HANS device, and the cable you see stuck to the top of the helmet, is his radio connection to communicate with the team and so they can communicate with him.
Another
car ready for a driver change is coming in, as the #54 Dinamic Motorsports
Porsche 911 GT3R which is ready for Matteo Cairoli, the Italian, to drive. So, it will either Austrian Klaus Bachler or
German Christian Engelhart finishing their stint. Klaus Bachler has been driving and running in
15th spot. Bachler helps belt
Cairoli into the car and quick talk, “this has happened, watch out for track
conditions.” Clean the windscreen,
change the tires, fuel the car. The
drive through penalty for the McLaren was for not respecting blue flags. The stewards are extremely busy.
Mirko Bortolotti leads Kelvin van der Linde now by 3.3 seconds. Race leader is in the lane now. 50 kilometers an hour is the speed limit in the pit lane. Tires being changed, the air jacks are installed. No driver change. Mirko Bortolotti will do a double stint. Kelvin van der Linde still runs ahead of Robin Frijns. A splash of fuel out the overflow on the Lamborghini is the norm. BMW #35 of Thomas Neubauer just pitted. They are having to claw their way back and they are down in 47th place right now. They were third and then got snookered. They will just have to chip away and see where they are. Loads of sparks from the Lamborghini coming into the Bus Stop.
Kelvin van der Linde lifts slightly through Eau Rouge. GT3 cars have antilock brakes of course. No abuse of the car. Take it nice and easy. Great to hear the wail of the 5.2 liter V10 in the back of the Audi, the same motor of course that is in the Lamborghini. Kelvin van der Linde has a lapped car, a Porsche ahead. Kelvin van der Linde catches up under braking and there’s more tire debris on the outside of the road, tire marbles and clag being flung offline. More pit action as well. Phil Keen’s woes had to be due to electrical problems. The #51 Iron Lynx Ferrari pits from the race lead. Come Ledogar hands the car over to Nicklas Nielsen. Ferrari #52 is in as well, the Pro-Am car.
Tearing the headlight film away. #52 is of course shared by Louis Machiels, John Wartique, Andrea Bertolini, and Alessio Rovera. We don’t have rain, but there’s mist descending over the circuit down the track from La Source and down into Eau Rouge over the trees. The fog and mist have come to Spa. This will help cool the drivers, but the mist will require use of the windscreen wipers. The engines will have more power. Another pit stop now for the #93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari. So much to think about, but visibility due to the mist and fog, will be a big deal.
Gentlemen drivers will learn a lot from their professional partners. They have the finance and the backing but will learn race craft indeed, all the time. That’s what it is about. Kelvin van der Linde pits from the lead and Robin Frijns is in the lane from second spot as well. WRT have changed over to being an Audi Sport team while in years past they were under the banner of Belgian Audi Club. Marco Wittman in the BMW and Nikki Thiim in the Aston Martin in the lane, too, putting Raffaelle Marciello in the #88 AKKA ASP Mercedes in the lead of the motor race.
Great variety of engine notes. The Italian cars have an evocative wailing scream to them while the German cars have a thundering roar, the Mercedes, and the BMW. David Pittard has now taken over the #34 Walkenhorst Motorsports BMW. Dennis Lind, too, has just taken over Audi #37 while Dries Vanthoor is now driving Audi #32. Ferrari #11 in Pro Am also pits. That’s the Ferrari for Kessel Racing, a car we saw stopped on the road in the daylight hours, the Tim Kohmann, Francesco Zollo, Giorgio Roda, and David Fumanelli driven car.
At Les Combes, uphill off the Kemmel straight, it is really dark, before the plunge down to Bruxelles, Speaker’s corner, and down to Pouhon or Double Gauche. A lot of the names of corners have changed over the years which makes it very confusing. Dries Vanthoor now leads Dennis Lind, David Pittard, and Ross Gunn. That’s the top four as it stands right now. Debriefing in the BMW Motorsport garage, the Walkenhorst team garage. At Spa, we are just past 1:00 A.M. on Sunday morning. So, we’ve raced now for a full eight and a half hours.
1/3rd of this event finished, but still 2/3rds to go yet. The mist has descended here at Spa. Mirko Bortolotti leads the motor race as the mist maybe is clearing up, believe it or not. Five or ten minutes ago we saw some low hanging clouds. It’s still warm. Last year, when we raced here at Spa, it was frigidly cold. Same at the Nurburgring. We have five or so hours yet before sunrise. Louis Machiels is our Pro-Am Cup leader, first in the class, and 19th in the overall. John Wartique, Alessio Rovera, and Andrea Bertolini are his co-drivers. Folks, my eyes have deceived me. We’ve got high humidity here at Spa and so there’s a layer of mist still hanging in the air, shrouding this wonderful circuit.
Machiels and company have a best lap time 6/10ths of a second faster than Matteo Cressoni currently at the wheel of the #93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari 488 GT3. Third in class is Charlie Eastwood who was drafted into the Aston Martin for Garage 59 replacing Jonny Adam. Jonny, we miss you, mate. Come back next year, please. The drivers don’t get distracted by the Leader Lights system and they can’t see it because it is outside the car, above the top left corner of the windscreen. They bound over the curbs back through the Bus Stop chicane.
We are watching in tenth spot, Patric Niederhauser, who was a star of this race last fall on his way to a second place finish. He is currently tenth overall, the Swiss driver, at the wheel of the #25 Audi Sport Team Sainteloc Racing Audi R8. He is catching up to Rik Breukers who leads the Silver Cup in the #90 Mad Panda Motorsports Mercedes AMG GT3. Niederhauser is pressing Breukers right now and he is a great driver for the Audi team. Normally the lights are crystal clear, but out of the fog layer, the lights look very hazy until we see the sunrise, hours away. The highest part on this circuit is at Les Combes after the uphill climb out of Eau Rouge and Raidillon. It’s deceptive, because some people assume incorrectly that the La Source hairpin happens to be the highest point on this circuit.
Doubling back through Pouhon and Fangnes, as well as Campus corner, there will be less fog. There are such great sounds from these engines. These are dream cars that we are seeing in this motor race and GT3 racing is going to soon become the norm of GT racing in the not too distant future. Breukers is still being monstered by Niederhauser, feeling the heat. 20th spot sees the second Pro-Am ranked car and team and that’s the #107 CMR Bentley. Not sure who is in that car now. We shall see who is indeed driving. It’s either Pierre-Alexandre Jean from France, Stuart White from South Africa, Jean’s countryman Nelson Panciatici, or, in his home race here in Belgium, Ulysse de Pauw.
Didn’t we see Ezequiel Perez-Companc wearing a panda costume earlier? We’ve talked about how good the driver lineup is. Ram Racing are now in the pit lane in their purple Mercedes AMG GT3 in the Pro-Am division. Fabian Schiller of Germany at the controls. The teams have 30 sets of tires to use through the weekend. 120 tires total. Check that. It’s 30 tires total, so about seven sets or a little more. Math all wrong there. From 2AM-4AM or so in the morning, there are moments you watch and see the brake discs glowing and being a spectator, eating frites mayonnaise and drinking a Belgian beer (a Jupiler or a Stella Artois). Don’t be standing around in the pit lane unless you are a cameraman. The pit crews have to do their job.
Speaking of pit stops the #33 Ferrari is in the lane, and yes, it has a Fiat logo on the side. This is the #33 Rinaldi Racing entry we’ve spoken of, the Hites/Crestani/Perel car. They spun off the road earlier and have to fight back from that setback. But the car is in clean shape running 26th in the overall right now. Mirko Bortolotti now leads Dries Vanthoor by 6.1 seconds. A double stint helps because the driver is comfortable with a full fuel load and fresh tires. It is misty at Les Combes indeed as we ride aboard the Lamborghini. It looks like the effects from a movie, doesn’t it. Down through Speaker’s corner, and watch the misty layers on the curbs and the paint.
That’s the slipperiest part of the road. If the back of the car is unloaded, you can spin the car very easily. Watch out. Stay safe out there. Charlie Eastwood replaced Marvin Kirchofer at Aston Martin, not to replace Jonny Adam. That was a mistake. Thank you, resident Aston Martin super fan, Sarah Rigby, for that correction. Charlie Eastwood was already on the team. Alex West, Chris Goodwin, Charlie Eastwood, Jonny Adam, the #188 Garage 59 Aston Martin. What’s up in Porsche world right now? We’ve checked on Aston Martin. What about Porsche?
Dennis Olsen is top of the shop in the Porsche camp in the #3 Schnabl Engineering car followed by the #22 GPX car with the retro Martini throwback livery in the hands of Matthieu Jaminet. Dennis, followed by the one and the only “Jam Jam”. We must give a shoutout to Jonny Adam who is not in this motor race. The entry list was always changing up to the race start this morning. Wolfgang Triller was a late call up for the EBM Giga Racing Porsche replacing Henry Da Silva. Carlos Rivas, Will Bamber, and Reid Harker are the other drivers in that quartet. Axcil Jeffries took over as driver number four in the #7 Toksport WRT Mercedes as well, from another driver who I cannot remember the name of.
Fuel the order of the evening in the lane as the #31 Team WRT Audi makes a pit stop, the car shared by Ryuichiro Tomita of Japan, Frank Bird from England, and Valdemar Eriksen from Denmark. The mist still hangs in the air. It is odd to see the cars being over fueled. It does not make much sense. Kudos Ben Constanduros, pit reporter on the SRO broadcast for pointing that out, as Dennis Lind is lighting the afterburners right now. So is David Pittard in the #34 Walkenhorst Motorsports BMW and he is catching Lind hand over fist. Traffic maybe played a part there but #34 is fastest in sector one! Wow!
How wide do you go on the outside line out of the Bus Stop? You are better to go over onto the curb but track limits will bite with those sawtooth curbs on the outside. That corrugated surface is going to damage the car. Or, you will rotate the car. Different driver levels and different speeds. Acclimatize to new track conditions. The maximum stint length of course is 65 minutes. Drive through penalty for overtaking under yellow for the #93 Sky Tempesta Racing Ferrari, and a black and white warning flag, too, for the #69 RAM Racing Mercedes, the pink Mercedes AMG GT3 that we saw in the lane earlier. Fabian Schiller sharing with Sam De Haan and Rob and Ricky Collard, father and son who are a part of that team.
Disrespecting track limits is the penalty. Mirko Bortolotti continues on his merry way in the lead. It’s the Italian trio in a Lamborghini Huracan. Andrea Caldarelli and Marco Mapelli are Bortolotti’s co-drivers. Still, a good chunk of the starters are in the race now. We’ve lost only five cars, maybe six. Half a dozen cars might be out of the race. The #56 Dinamic Motorsports Porsche is in the pit lane being worked on. They’re not a retirement yet, but it’s been a fraught race for the team of Romain Dumas, Andrea Rizzoli, and Mikkel Pedersen. We also think the #26 Sainteloc Audi has officially been retired with Jamie Green as the lead driver alongside Finlay Hutchinson and Adrien Tambay.
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