Ferrari #51 is in the lane. Matt Griffin is still leading Pro-Am and the Audi is braking too hard and late and just barely gets to the pit lane! Yikes! They can’t go another lap without running afoul of the stint length. We also have an investigation underway by the stewards to look at speeding in the lane for the #52 AF Corse Pro-Am Ferrari. Alessio Rovera at the wheel of it, he is under scrutiny. Less than two hours to go. New tires, and fuel. 1:56.5 for the Ferrari’s pit stop. Iron Lynx just started in 2017. They’ve matched wits and skill with the best in the business at WRT. WRT and the people involved have all won as drivers. Vincent Vosse, Pierre Dieudonne, and Thierry Tassin, all of them have won this race as drivers. The same is true with Giacomo Piccini. Every one of these team managers, has been a driver in this race before.
It can’t hurt, adds perspective, and sympathy. That’s a true positive. So, the #32 Audi is trundling down the hill while the #51 Ferrari whizzes past down out of Eau Rouge and into Les Combes. Remember we saw the #7 Mercedes smack dab in front of van der Linde and it cost them boatloads of time. So, they are down and must overcome a major deficit as the Audi dives into Bruxelles. There’s urgency in the driving for Dries Vanthoor. He is pressing flat out. These drivers and teams have been at it hammer and tongs since the overnight hours in this motor race.
There are back markers all over the shop as we see the battle resume. A wall of traffic looms for race leader Alessandro Pier Guidi. The windscreen wipers are on again as the rain is spritzing down at Eau Rouge. Who will this benefit? They climb again to Les Combes. Pier Guidi will scythe through the traffic, and we have a wet road, the windscreen wipers are on. I thought we’d seen a driver change in Audi #32. Maybe the transponder wasn’t reset. Each driver has a port that they plug into for driver ID. You set the switch in the car, as van der Linde squiggles and slides through Piff Paff. Drive through penalty for speeding in the lane for Alessio Rovera in the #52 AF Corse Ferrari.
He will relinquish second in Pro-Am, as the gap is down to five some odd seconds between Pier Guidi and Vanthoor. Last time by it was 6.7 seconds. Raindrops on the pit straight. 6.4 seconds now the gap, so, down by 3/10ths of a second. Dries Vanthoor must be aggressive, but time is of the essence and so is patience. They are trying to claw their way to a win from 54th place on the grid. Charles Weerts is aiming to be the youngest ever winner at Spa. Right now, though, Audi are climbing the mountain. They’ve not reached the summit yet. Ferrari are on top. Dries Vanthoor is at the wheel of the Audi. In replay, we watch the driver change.
We have a short Full Course Yellow to remove debris. No need for a safety car. Full Course Yellow in 20 seconds. Mercedes #40 runs wide in the Piff Paff. Full Course yellow in ten seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Full Course Yellow, now. Wipers on intermittent as we see less rain in front and in the camera shots. The tires can cool off a wee bit. The slick can work on a damp track if it has heat and we still have moisture falling from the sky. Restart on short notice. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Green flag. Kelvin van der Linde says it makes sense for WRT to keep Dries Vanthoor in the car now with the changing weather conditions. An hour and 50 minutes left on the board before this race is over.
Double stints will be the name of the game to the end of the motor race. It is extremely difficult for a driver to keep the car on the road while you are pushing. Stay cool but try to win the biggest race of the year, the grandest endurance race in GT3. Miguel Molina, oh my gosh! He just screams past Dries Vanthoor down through Eau Rouge and back up the other side! Vanthoor was able to pass Robert Renauer’s Porsche, the #911 Herberth Motorsports car. This is bad news for the track position for the Audi team because now the #51 Ferrari can punch it and whistle off into the distance.
The road is getting more treacherous. We can see from the trackside cameras that the rain is tipping down at the top of the circuit here at Spa. What’s worse, everybody and I mean everybody, and their brother is on slick tires right now. This circuit is going to turn into a freaking skating rink! Dries Vanthoor, in a perfect world wants to have clear track so he can acquire the target and give Alessandro Pier Guidi everything he can handle. But, with the lapped traffic all over the shop, look, he’s going to have a major pickle on his hands.
Molina extends his advantage, slip sliding away with an hour and 48 minutes remaining. Dries Vanthoor is still chasing Alessandro Pier Guidi. Miguel Molina is now a wingman for Alessandro Pier Guidi because he has become a blocker to the second place AudI, Dries Vanthoor in the #32. Pier Guidi is bish bash boshing it right now. This is reported to be a brief rain shower and there will be more rain with 15 minutes left in the race. The gap is eight and a half seconds, advantage Ferrari. Pier Guidi is the pioneer. The best lap they did was a 2:19. We shall keep track of the lap times. The weather is very inconsistent right now.
Vanthoor is trapped not only by Molina but also by the Porsche, the #911 Herberth Motorsports entry, and Robert Renauer at the wheel is going like the clappers trying not to get lapped again. Everyone is in their own individual race. They are relevant to their own races and their own classes, not losing time to the opposition. Molina is scampering away and the Ferrari’s somehow or other, they are set up for these intermediate, slick, greasy conditions with spritzes of water dampening the road the same way you’d spritz down a paper towel to wipe something off your countertop for example.
Rain at Pouhon. Pier Guidi must have his hands full being in-between wet and dry conditions. Taking the car to the pit lane to bolt on new boots is worthless. Just keep trudging on, sunshine. Ben Barnicoat still has McLaren #38 in the top ten and the Ferrari has the advantage. Nico Muller, one lap down aboard the #37 WRT Audi, is in the lane, but we don’t know if it is for scheduled service or to serve a drive through penalty. Pier Guidi leads the race and does so by nine seconds. 519 laps completed, 2,259 miles. If we are green the whole way we could see over 560 laps, unless we see heavy rainfall. We don’t know when it will come.
It could be before the race ends, or, if we are lucky, it could fall after the motor race ends. Nick Tandy has gone through a lot. Blistered hands, a dodgy fuel rig, and Laurens Vanthoor’s absence after crashing his motor scooter in the pit lane, breaking his nose. There are stories to tell with 58 individual chapters. Toksport and EBM must wonder too about the different drivers they have, looking over and saying, “who is this bloke?’ Nick Tandy, making it look easy in the rain, after his heroics to win this race this year. He does some driving with Porsche, but he also drives Corvette’s stateside.
He is a winner here at Spa, at Le Mans, at the Nurburgring. He came out of junior stock car racing and hot rod racing, and his late brother Joe Tandy was also involved with that. We look at the #66 Attempto Racing Audi which is a lap down. That car too, has had transponder dramas for most of the race. We also watch the #27 Audi for Sainteloc Racing and we’ve mentioned them several times. That car has had issues with wheel bearings or maybe a single wheel bearing, throughout the motor race so far. That car is 22 laps down. There’s not a whole lot to race for but they’ll keep plugging away. Tandy is pushing hard and it can’t help that he has blisters all over his hands which must be incredibly painful. His hands must be burning. Race car drivers are a tough lot, especially endurance sports car drivers.
He has been getting less rest and has had a car that is not in the best of shape. Aurelien Panis and company are 21 laps down gaining data for next year. Nico Muller is fifth, but he has a drive through penalty for track limits in his future. It is a badge of honor, risking life and limb to finish a race like this, coming up on the #166 Porsche, another car with a transponder issue. Rik Breukers is now back behind the wheel of the #90 Mad Panda Motorsports Mercedes, as the lights flash to warn drivers of cars coming up on them. That is the modern-day equivalent of a flag marshal at some of these Grade 1 FIA circuits that are approved for Formula 1 racing, and Spa is one of those.
Australian Jordan Love has the #40 SPS Automotive Performance Mercedes AMG GT3 in 21st overall. That is a Silver Cup rated automobile. It is true of drivers, commentators, and teams, they come from far and wide to race this blue-ribbon event in GT3 racing. For the second straight year the GT World Challenge Asia season has been cancelled. We all know why. It is the challenges of this cursed pandemic the whole world is currently living through. Thankfully we will have GT World Challenge Australia this year. The Aussie GT Championship has bubbled under the radar, but they know have GT and TCR. We have watched Valentin Haase-Clot in the Aston Martin and Alexandre Imperatori in the KCMG Porsche.
We are approaching the final hour and a half of this event, so, the equivalent duration of a standard GT World Challenge America race. Alexandre Imperatori sharing with Josh Burdon and Edoardo Liberati, they run 12th in the overall and have had too many penalties and some bad luck on safety cars. They went with a different tire strategy on a gamble, and it didn’t work with the rain. They’ve been down the order and sadly the gamble didn’t pay off. The margin is up to ten seconds now between the leading Ferrari and the second place Audi, as we watch this battle for sixth place. Christopher Mies vs. Nick Tandy.
Dries Vanthoor carves his way through traffic. Another 4/10ths lost in sector one on this particular lap. Are the changing conditions favoring one brand over the other? Odds are, yes. The drivers are now beginning to use the painted curbs. So, the rain has dissipated. The traffic might be having a more direct effect for the Audi. You can bank on Dries Vanthoor charging, but he has to be circumpstact thtorugh traffic on a greasy road. We keep an eye too on Mirko Bortolotti in the #63 Lamborghini. Watch Miguel Molina, in the #53 Ferrari.
Molina can uncork laps that are as fast as the leader all day long. But the trouble for him is he is dealing with lapped cars getting in the way. Miguel Molina raced a lot in the old Pirelli World Challenge which has become GT World Challenge America and won the SprintX Championship. That was a two-driver format back in those days. He is a versatile driver, who used to race DTM and single seaters and races well in a GT3 Ferrari. Now, up to Les Combes, look, we have yet another battle pack. Pick the bones out of this lot, chaps. I challenge you.
The Porsche has the power and streaks past the Audi and the Lamborghini. Leo Machitski driving the Barwell Lamborghini is hanging on to third spot in Pro-Am but just by the skin of his teeth! David Perel in the #33 Rinaldi Racing Ferrari is ahead and a lap up on these boys. But this is a fair dinkum traffic jam through Les Combes. You can bet your bottom dollar that these guys need to get sorted out and fast. Machitski was here for the British GT races at Spa last weekend and was a winner. So he is riding the crest of a wave right now even if he did win in a different GT3 based championship.
Machitski shared a car with Dennis Lind last weekend and Lind is fifth overall at the wheel of the #37 WRT Audi presently. Machitski runs wide. We are working lap 523 of this motor race, so, we’ve gone 2,276 miles right on the nose. The race leader now is 11 and a half seconds up on the field as the road is drying out. Ross Gunn in the Aston Martin is lapping quicker than the Audi. He is the final car on the lead lap, but the Aston Martin is not at all on the same sequence as the top two. They are going to have to hit the lane for a splash and a dash more than likely.
Ross Gunn will pit in about 20 minutes while Pier Guidi and Vanthoor are close to their pit stops as well, the end of their fuel stints. Ross Gunn may not quite get into the fight. The stint time will be troubling. Their fuel strategy is good. Ross Gunn could conceivably drive down the pit lane to reset the stint time but that would put the Aston Martin crew behind the eight ball. They need a safety car. That would be manna from heaven for the Garage 59 Aston Martin #95 because then they could easily close in on the top two runners getting on now, for just having an hour and a half exactly, left on the board. We need to see where they stand after their next stint.
They have two stops left. A full stint is 65 minutes. Half of that is 32 minutes. That equals 97 and we have less than that left. We have precisely 90 minutes to go. So, you’d need two stops, but you are indeed only doing a stint and a half if my rusty, horrendous math is even close to being right. So, it is true. In terms of strategy, Aston Martin #95 will be in a spot of bother on their strategy before this motor race is done and dusted. We watch the #61 EBM Porsche, the Earl Bamber Motorsports entry with Will Bamber driving down the hill into Eau Rouge. We continue to watch Ross Gunn in the Aston Martin in third place, as Alessandro Pier Guidi leads.
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