Cooperation will be necessary from these Silver class leaders. Let the leaders go who are fighting for the overall win. Give us some help! So, Nicklas Nielsen leads Kelvin van der Linde by six seconds as we watch the Silver Cup lead scrum too. This will be a fabulous run to the end of the motor race. Nielsen’s gap has come down to five seconds after being as high as six seconds as third place now is the Aston Martin #95, with Ross Gunn now driving. Kelvin van der Linde is still flying. Nicklas Nielsen though, runs in the lead, 4.6 seconds ahead.
More track limits induced drive through penalties for cars #70, #159, and #50. This includes the second place running Aston Martin for Garage 59. Massive implications there. We saw #159 lead and then have a door issue, get back into the picture, and now they have a track limits penalty which is a massive kick in the stomach before this race is over. The car must take the penalty. Take your medicine. Put it behind you. Lots of motor racing left to go. Again, Nicklas Nielsen leads by 4.6 seconds. Ross Gunn will pit from third, 15 minutes earlier than the leaders. In the short term, #159 will be behind the eight ball. Max Hofer is getting closer and closer in the Pro-Am battle.
Hofer driving one of the Audi’s of course. That is the #99 Audi Sport Team Attempto car. Hofer is racing through Piff Paff and has a half a lap or so on the #159 but that car is diving for the lane to serve the penalty. Kelvin van der Linde is now losing time to the Ferrari. Maybe they adjusted tire pressures a touch, or the conditions on the track are changing. The gap is extending. For Ferrari, have they broken the spirit of the WRT Audi boys? Drive through for track limits for the #30 WRT Audi, that now in the hands of Benjamin Goethe.
We’ll see more pit stops 40 minutes from now. We have some top drivers warming up in the bull pen (to use a baseball term), and who will be turned loose in the next stint. What does Kelvin van der Linde have left in the locker? The gap is 5.6 seconds, and he must pass a back-marker with one of the KCMG Porsche’s. Audi are now on the back foot relative to the leaders. Dries Vanthoor is the one driver on that WRT Audi team in the #32 that can match the pace of the Ferrari lap by lap. So, we look at the top trap speeds through Eau Rouge again. Ross Gunn in the Aston Martin is top of the shop there at 246 kilometers an hour.
Nickolai Kjaergaard in another Aston Martin is second vastest at 245. He is level pegging with the McLaren, the #70 Inception Racing machine in the hands of Ollie Milroy. Nicklas Nielsen our race leader, speaking of level pegging, is down at 244 kilometers an hour along with Rob Bell at the wheel of the #38 Jota Sport McLaren. So, the difference here is two kilometers an hour between these five cars, which equals around 3.2 miles an hour. The speed differential in miles per hour is scant, at oh, a mile and a quarter per hour when you get down to the finite math of it. These speeds are through the uphill sweep at Eau Rouge. The top speeds are dominated by mid/front engine cars while the top of the order is a rear engine car.
Two parts of the circuit are top speed dominant while the middle sector is very aero dependent. That’s how Spa works. Everyone is in the same boat. Balance of Performance is an annoying fact of life in modern sports car racing, but clearly it is a successful situation with making many different cars that race differently depending on their configuration, able to be within mere seconds, and mere miles an hour of each other in top speed performance or overall lap time. Aurelien Panis, in 32nd in the overall, has a drive through penalty for track limits in his future. He is driving the #27 Sainteloc Racing Audi. That car is one of 17 Silver Cup class GT3 cars, and the highest subscription of this series in quite a while.
This is a stellar entry with 25 Pro rated cars, 17 Silver, 14 Pro-Am and just two Am cars. Some enjoyment of Am drivers has been taken away, and the drivers get frustrated by the blokes who have more experience. Let’s check the speeds through the double left hand turn at Pouhon once again and we can see that everyone is within range. Kelvin van der Linde leads the way on the speed chart, tied with Lucas Auer and Nickolai Kjaergaard at 170 kilometers per hour (106 and ¼ miles an hour). Then, close behind at 169 kilometers an hour (105 and 5/8ths miles an hour), we have the Lamborghini’s, the Orange 1 FFF #63 car for Mirko Bortolotti, and the #77 Barwell Racing entry of Sandy Mitchell.
We have seen the Audi very fast through that section along with Mercedes and Aston Martin. Nicolai Kjaergaard has retained second in Pro-Am over Max Hofer but is now more than a minute down (1:12 down), on the class leader. So, Nicklas Nielsen still leads. Ferrari has not won here since 2004. They are seeking only their fourth win as a brand here at the 24 Hours of Spa compared to the German brands that have many more wins here. Ferrari have won this race in 1949 and 1953, and then, a long, long, long dry spell until 2004.
In ’49 it was Luigi Chinetti and Jean Lucas teaming up to win and in 1953, a couple of Ferrari Formula 1 legends in Giuseppe Farina and Mike Hawthorne. This was during a point in history when the race was run in a fragmented fashion and didn’t take place every single year. There had been a decade gap with WW. II. Then, there were two more consecutive runnings in 1948 and ’49. Following this, was a four year gap until 1953 and then, after another Ferrari victory, due to reconstruction from the war and other circumstances, there was not another Spa 24 Hours for a full decade, a full eleven years, until 1964 when a Mercedes won and the race became a full on touring car event which it would remain for the better part of the next 35 years.
Nicklas
Nielsen through the compression at Eau Rouge.
The forces through that corner, are like the craziest rollercoaster
you’ve been on, but you are in a race car, doing it all the time in the wet,
the dry, whatever. It is the single
largest challenge on a racetrack anywhere in the world, and there are lots of
great tracks with great corners all over.
But Eau Rouge at Spa Francorchamps is the top of the list. More drive through penalties issued for track
limits with the #40 SPS Automotive Performance Mercedes and the #66 Audi Sport
Team Attempto car. The #166 Am Cup
leading Haegeli by T2 Racing Porsche.
Manuel Lauck might be driving that car, but that car has had a
transponder issue.
Lauck, the 37-year-old German, he was a champion in Asian Le Mans Series over the wintertime. No pressure on that team. Matt Griffin in the Ferrari is delivering in Pro-Am, a centrally contracted driver for Ferrari along with Duncan Cameron for AF Corse. Miguel Molina and Rino Mastronardi, those two have also driven very well in that car. Griffin is from Blarney in Ireland. Now, there’s a lot of blarney in Ireland and that is a standard expression everybody hears whether you happen to be Irish or not. But, yours truly had no clue there was a true town with the name of Blarney, in Ireland. That’s wild.
County Cork is probably the most magnificent county on the whole island of Ireland. Second in Pro-Am is the #52 AF Corse Ferrari in the hands of Belgian John Wartique. Wartique was a late addition to that car along with Alessio Rovera and they replaced both James Calado from England and Italian Lorenzo Bontempelli in that driver’s strength. Many drivers have had to step away from their teams due to the pandemic, the COVID virus. Scotsman Sandy Mitchell is having a good race in the #77 Barwell Motorsports Lamborghini. Mitchell is a lap behind and is the reigning British GT GT3 champion. Drive through penalty for track limits to the #20 Mercedes. That’s the quartet of Valentin Pierburg, Colin Braun, George Kurtz, and Dominik Baumann.
This is the second consecutive year that Braun and Kurtz (who are regulars in SRO GT World Challenge America), have come to Belgium to contest this race. Same team, same drivers as a year ago, having also raced at the 24 Hours of Spa last year. They have had some penalties that have had them down the order from where they wanted to be on the podium in their class. Baumann drives through Stavelot, one of the best corners on the circuit, on this iteration and the old eight-mile track from decades gone by. Baumann hits the lane to serve a penalty. He was champion of GT World Challenge Europe in 2012, driving the predecessor to the Mercedes AMG GT3, the awesome Mercedes SLS GT3 back in the day. That was quite the car, with a retro look and gullwing doors that hearkened back to the famous 300SL Gullwing of the 1950s.
Benjamin Goethe in a battle in the Team WRT Audi #30. That’s a legendary and gorgeous paint scheme for Gulf Oil on that car going back to the days of John Wyre and the Gulf Racing Team with cars like the Ford GT40, the Porsche 917, and the Mirage Ford prototype. Some liveries don’t age. They just stand out and look good. We can see many scraps up and down the field. 37 cars of the 58 starters are still racing out there with two and a half hours left. We are now looking at cars we’ve seen but have been flying under the radar. One we have been speaking of is the 14th overall positioned #99 Attempto Racing Audi, Max Hofer, the Austrian, at the wheel of it.
This car is third in the Silver Cup class. They are chasing the Nicolai Kjaergaard driven Aston Martin that had a penalty a wee while ago. They did not leapfrog the Aston. We are set up for a great finish as David Addison is back in the booth. So, more disrespect of track limits being penalized. #14 and #911. That #14 entry is the Lamborghini, the Emil Frey Racing car and the #911 is the Herberth Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R. That is the car shared by brothers Robert and Alfred Renauer along with Antares Au and Daniel Allemann.
Alex
Fontana is in the Lamborghini. Those
cars have been down the order. We have
now run 501 laps, 2,180 miles. The
Nielsen and van der Linde battle has been amazing. Endurance sports car racing is much like
watching a golf tournament. If you want
nonstop action all the time, sports car racing is not your cup of tea. If you like the long game, watching the tide
come in and out, with a payoff at the end, this is your deal. Check it out.
The #51 and #32 cars have been battling each other for the better part
of the last 8-10 hours with just six seconds in the race here. Some teams asking Race Control to wave the
blue flags.
We are expected to have a dry race for the last couple hours. Rain may happen after the race, but we doubt it will be during the final two hours here. Now we watch the #222 Silver Cup Team Allied Racing Porsche 911 GT3R, Bastian Buus from Denmark at the wheel of it. So, we now have David Addison and Ryan Myrehn in the booth and Jemma Scott in the pit lane as we watch Bastian Buus who is running 11th in class in Silver Cup to be precise. Bastian Buus raced in GT4 Europe in 2020 and now races the DTM Trophy in GT4 cars as well supporting GT4 entries.
Robert Renauer now brings the #911 Herberth Motorsports Porsche to the pit lane and that was a car that spun like a top in every Free Practice session this weekend prior to the race. This is a drive through penalty for Renauer and meanwhile, yet another issued to Alexandre Imperatori in the second KCMG Porsche, #18, the sister car to the #47. Imperatori, the Swiss driver, sharing with Edoardo Liberati of Italy and Australia’s Josh Burdon. Both KCMG cars in the top 11. Maxime Martin in #47 is seventh and Alexandre Imperatori is 11th overall. Nicklas Nielsen can consistently eke out a tenth of a second every so often.
Previously, we saw Kelvin van der Linde do the same thing, but Dries Vanthoor, he will be the closer. He might just be the man to do that. If #32 wins, Charles Weerts will become the youngest driver to ever win this race at 20 years and five months. The previous youngest winner was Maximilian Buhk when he earned the victory in 2013 for HTP Motorsports in a Mercedes SLS AMG with Maximilian Gotz and the legend, Bernd Schneider also sharing the car that weekend. The Ferrari seems to drive better on lighter fuel tanks while the Audi runs better on heavier tanks.
Don’t jinx the Lynx. As we have discussed, Ferrari have only won this race three previous times, in 1949, 1953, and 2004, during the glory days of GT1 with BMS Scuderia Italia and the awesome, front engine V12 Ferrari 550 Maranello. Ferrari wants to break a streak and the German’s have been winning like crazy. The last non-German car to win was a Chevrolet Corvette in the FIA GT Championship days. For many years, this race was a round of the European Touring Car Championship. When that faded, this race was run as a one-off touring car event.
The two years we had Peugeot 306 diesel hatchbacks winning, the Royal Automobile Club of Belgium, they said, “ugh! This isn’t going to work!” So, they had Stephane Ratel approach them and he said, “I can put your race back on the international map.” Boy oh boy, has he done that. BMW has the most wins of any brand at 24 and Porsche has eight wins. For many years, touring cars were the bread and butter of this race. They won in GT3 in 2015, ’16, and ’18. Porsche won this race in 2010, 2019, and last year, 2020. Alfa Romeo ran touring cars here at Spa too but haven’t won since 1938. Porsche’s, for a brief spell, raced alongside the touring cars here at the 24 Hours of Spa.
The Porsche 911 notionally was entered in a touring car. It raced in the British and Australian Touring Car Championships for a while. That too is how Mazda got in with the RX-7 as well. We are now watching in action, the #61 EBM Giga Racing Porsche, which had a driver shuffle before the race started when Wolfgang Triller was called up as a last-minute sub. Adrian D’Silva was the original driver, but had to stand down from his position due to a COVID diagnosis.
Nicklas
Nielsen now leads the motor race by 7.4 seconds. Will Bamber is Earl’s younger brother and so,
Earl Bamber ought to be checking on his own car. So, we came up with the Bam Cam Jam acronym
for the team of Earl Bamber, Matty Campbell, and Matty Jaminet. But what are going to do for this team of
Will Bamber, Reid Harker, Wolfgang Triller, and Carlos Rivas? Well, this isn’t working. We need a hashtag but it isn’t going to roll
off the tongue. Now, we have a penalty
for the #18 KCMG Porsche announced on the screen, and guess what?
Il pleut maintenant. It’s raining, right now, as we speak. Porsche, someone in your company must give the weatherman a pink slip. He’s fired. Sorry. Just as we thought “oh, rain? What rain?” Now, it’s tipping down! It’s tipping down at Blanchimont. You know who this helps? Ross Gunn in the #95 Aston Martin, who was due to pit anyway, and as he comes to the lane, he is off sequence from the top two. So, Gunn ought to go back on sequence with his opponents. It is down to stint time, third overall. 504 laps, 2,193 miles completed by this automobile thus far. There are more, slick Pirelli P Zero tires being bolted onto that Aston. They are pitting bang on schedule.
We have rain at the start/finish line, but we don’t know if there are other portions of this circuit that are seeing raindrops. One suggestion is that this rain lasts just ten minutes. It could be a shower, a spritz. Aston Martin might get caught out. Iron Lynx stay out and so does WRT. They are using the windscreen wipers on this side of the circuit. We see a break in the cloud and blue sky. It will be greasy for a lap or two but won’t be too bad. These are mixed conditions and that is the perfect situation for Kelvin van der Linde. He could well be in the pound seats to claw back a wee bit of time.
#95 ought to pit on lap 530 if it stays on sequence. It is ahead far enough of the #37 Audi of Robin Frijns. So, Ross Gunn, (brother of Squirt Gunn), stays at the wheel. Oh man! That was funny! It’s getting late in the race, folks. Many of us have been up all night and needing way, way, way too much coffee! The gap is shrinking between the Ferrari and the Audi as we see one of the fastest Silver Cup cars as an impediment to the leaders. This is of course that pesky panda, the #90 Mad Panda Motorsports Mercedes AMG GT3. Nielsen goes defensive and we have a truly mad panda because he is no fan of the rain. That’s the Finn, Patrick Kujala at the wheel of it.
Kelvin van der Linde is quicker than the Ferrari despite being five and a half or so seconds in-arrears. Look at the sheen on the road. It’s not wet, not dry, just slick as whatever. It’s like pouring molasses or honey or some sweet, sticky condiment on the road. Porsche #18 has taken it’s drive through penalty. The stint length on that car has reset as Alexandre Imperatori driving, has been delayed even more. It sounds like KCMG has rolled the dice and gone with wet weather treaded Pirelli’s. That pass we saw was for overall position. If that Porsche is on wets, then Imperatori, the poor bloke is in a pickle. There’s no way those wet tires will last on a drying track. They’ll be junk in a hurry.
It’s not even damp. It’s just greasy and it’s stopped raining. KCMG should just roll the dice. As Julius Caesar said on January 10th of 49 B.C., Alea iacta est. The die is cast. Thank you, Ryan Myrehn, for that attributed and astute Caesar quote to describe the situation we face in this motor race presently. Kelvin van der Linde has pulled back a few thousandths in the first sector of this lap as van der Linde presses on through Campus corner. This section of the course will be greasier than the start/finish line, but we’ll see a dry road at that point on the circuit. There’s only one line through that corner because of all the tire clag, all the junked rubber tidbits that are to either side of the racing line. Just slither and sashay your way through there.
Kelvin van der Linde runs deep into the final chicane, scrabbling around the corner as he is 4/10ths of a second slower and is now 5.8 seconds behind the Ferrari. Meanwhile, more woe and misery for the #63 Orange 1 FFF Lamborghini which led this race earlier. That car has a flat left rear tire. They’ve had boatloads of penalties. Thankfully, we have had very few punctures. Good news for Pirelli. So, the tire is changed and then Bortolotti is back on his merry way. Orange 1 FFF have had a fraught race after their drive through penalties and now this puncture.
Lamborghini are still in search of their first win here at Spa. It has eluded them for years. They’ve won every other major enduro that a GT3 car is eligible for. So, they’ve won at the Rolex 24 at Daytona in IMSA competition. They’ve won at the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring. But they just can’t seem to seal the deal here in Belgium in the Ardennes Forest. Lamborghini motorsports boss Giorgio Sanna has been after this one for years. This is the trophy they want in the trophy case back in Bologna. In the Silver Cup, the gap between Patrick Kujala and Nicolai Kjaergaard has ballooned to a minute and 15 seconds. The rain has stopped but just in case, the fourth place running Ferrari in Pro-Am, the #93, has kept the windscreen wiper working. Chris Froggatt, the Englishman is currently at the controls.
Froggatt is being pursued by Will Bamber in the Porsche, the #61 entry. But Bamber is way behind. It’s not like Froggatt has to freak out and think, “oh dear! This chap is right on my six!” That’s not the case at all. Alexandre Imperatori is still soldiering on, but he’s eight full seconds behind the faster cars that have not been delayed in the pit lane. KCMG rolled the dice too soon. They could have been heroes and they sadly got snookered. Max Hofer in the #99 Audi Sport Team Attempto Audi R8 is coming in a hurry. Imperatori is sliding all over the road. It is like racing a car on a road legal tire on a racetrack. It just won’t work.
Imperatori, the Shanghai, China based Swiss driver for the Hong Kong based team of KCMG, he just doesn’t have the right set of boots on that automobile. Imperatori has raced in Lamborghini Super Trofeo. Imperatori was initially at Falken Tires Motorsports but is now at KCMG. So, Kelvin van der Linde is now five and a half seconds behind the Ferrari, staying within striking distance of Nicklas Nielsen and just as we sing his praises for reeling in the leader, he runs wide at the final chicane, the corner we used to call The Bus Stop, here at Spa. Poor old van der Linde has exceeded the adhesion limits and now must start back at square one, or circle one in the case of a tire, maybe.
We’ve seen Nicklas Nielsen drift sideways into La Source too. Be patient. Gauge the grip, but you just can’t. van der Linde is till pushing hard just as he has since 6AM this morning when the sun came up. We understand via pit reporter Jemma Scott, that the Lamborghini’s punctured Pirelli P Zero was caused by running over debris. A logical conclusion that. No shortage of debris on the road, and that’s the nature of a 24-hour sports car race. It’s like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill. It will roll backwards if you aren’t careful. You have to go offline. Every corner, you could have frites mayonnaise and a glass of beer. That’s not so much the case in the current day and age.
There was a franchise called Whoopee Snacks that sold frites mayonnaise and beer, so, likely either Stella Artois or Jupiler beer. Now then, we have another glimpse of the #7 Toksport WRT Mercedes AMG GT3, Marvin Dienst at the controls. They started from pit lane and yesterday the driver lineup changed. Axcil Jeffries was called up when an existing driver on the team, Berkay Besler, had to stand down. Jeffries was told he could drive but had to get to know everyone on the team again, and they had to start from the pit lane. They are running 16th in the overall and fourth in the Silver Cup class. Marvin Dienst is an ex-Porsche driver.
Some quick history on Berkay Besler. Besler, from Turkey, is currently racing Porsche Supercup. He has also raced in GT4 Europe. We are looking at the #50 Hub Auto Mercedes that has a retro livery from a Mercedes that won it’s class here at the Spa 24 Hours 50 years ago, in 1971. That car was driven by Hans Heyer and Clemens Schickentanz. But this car that Maxi Buhk is currently driving has had a horrendous motor race to this point. They were stuck in the pit lane making repairs to the car for most of the morning and are running 39th in the overall. In 2013, Maximilian Buhk was one of the winners of this race. Buhk drove with Maxi Gotz and DTM legend Bernd Schneider and they blitzed everybody that year. But this year, has been a bear of a race for Gotz, Buhk, and their third co-driver, Nicky Catsburg. What a great driver lineup. Yelmer Buurman was supposed to drive this car but couldn’t.
David Fumanelli, the Italian, has also had a fair share of trouble with his teammates in the #11 Kessel Racing Ferrari 488 GT3 as well, and they are currently eighth in class in the Pro-Am Cup. Sometime in the opening four or five hours yesterday, it was sitting across the racetrack having spun through the downhill section of the course, at Pouhon, Fangnes, Stavelot etc. They’ve fought back and recovered to 30th in the overall. Ferrari #33 for Rinaldi Racing, driven by David Perel, there is a penalty in that car’s future. Sandy Mitchell in the #77 Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini is about to inherit second place in class as in the lane for service is Ferrari #52, the AF Corse entry in the hands now of Alessio Rovera.
Barwell Motorsport have a good pedigree and it can be attributed for the most part, to this very race, having entered it and won it in class numerous times in the decade or so that this race has been the domain of GT3 cars. The Barwell boys are looking for a podium. Rob Bell is now eighth in the overall after going a couple laps down due to drive through penalties and the like. The lead gap is closing overall as here, look, we can see Sandy Mitchell plotting to make a move on the Rinaldi Ferrari. The cars squirm all over the road with the slick surface. Drive through penalties for track limits to the retro liveried HubAuto #50 Mercedes, and our pals in the berries and custard #166 Haegeli T2 Racing Porsche, the berries and custard car, for what else? Say it with me. Track limits.
#166 is the Am surviving Porsche and then there is that red Mercedes that was listed as retired but not now. Matt Griffin and company in the #53 AF Corse Ferrari, they are still pounding around and running right behind Markus Winkelhock. #53 are quietly plugging away with a reliable Ferrari. This is in a Pro-Am car of course, with minimum drive times that must be reached by the Pro-Am and Am drivers in those lineups. If the professional can work with the amateur, that will help. We are looking for the next round of pit stops and should see the leading Iron Lynx Ferrari in the lane the next time by. 512 laps completed, 513 the next time by, so we are now at mile marker 2,228. Wow. Over 2,000 miles run already.
Audi #32 will pit next time by and then will pit at 540 before they can run to the end. Now, the #99 Audi for Audi Sport Team Attempto with Max Hofer driving, is in. He will hand off to a co-driver and we also see the #37 WRT Audi in the pit lane, Robin Frijns now driving, and the Bastian Buus driven Porsche. Into the lane now, comes the race leading Iron Lynx Ferrari for a scheduled service. Nicklas Nielsen has run a great stint and Alessandro Pier Guidi, the reigning SRO GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup champion. Come Ledogar had good pace but not good enough. Kelvin van der Linde is the erstwhile leader. He will have one lap on his own before hitting the lane.
New slick Pirelli P Zero tires onto the Ferrari with Giacomo Piccini, the team manager, leading the crew. Kelvin van der Linde has been balked by the #7 Mercedes on his in lap. So, this will shake things up, perhaps. Into Les Combes and Bruxelles, oh dear, Kelvin van der Linde will be fuming if that back marker doesn’t get out of the way. Finally, van der Linde makes the pass as Pier Guidi is going to have a head of steam here, look, in the next lap or two. #51 will be in the danger zone with lapped traffic just the same. So maybe we will see a bit of equilibrium here. This will be Kelvin van der Linde’s in lap, and will he hand the car to Dries Vanthoor to take it to the flag?
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