Miguel Molina says the Ferrari team at Iron Lynx is on a totally different strategy. I don't think Nicky Catsburg is going to catch the Ferrari. Iron Lynx to the lane. Nicky Catsburg takes the lead! He will go through and score the points! Rigon got snookered! He will stay in the car. Man oh man, he was defending like crazy. Stop and go penalties handed to a couple of the teams as we hear Joel Doral, the assistant Race Director on the radio. Rigon back in the race. Gounon and Estre move up as we see Spa Francorchamps at nighttime. This race has a whole different feel now. The weather has been absolutely incredible. We are nearing 11PM in the evening and we'll be into the bulk of Sunday soon. Porsche #100 has a punctured tire. Julien Andlauer now 23rd in the overall and the #100 team has been star crossed here at Spa Francorchamps to this point. Andlauer staying in the car and he will go a lap down.
143 laps in the books. Nico Menzel leads the Pro-Am class in 26th in the overall in the Herberth Motorsports Porsche. Track limit warnings have been reset but they are still being accrued I believe. Nicky Catsburg leads by 11 seconds. BMW has a great history here at Spa in the 24 Hours in both touring cars and GT3. Arjun Maini leading Gold Cup in the #5 Haupt Racing Team Mercedes. Jean Baptiste Simmenauer leading Silver Cup in the #30 WRT Audi, 14th in the overall. The highest placed Audi is 11th, the #46 car of Nico Muller, Fred Vervisch, and Valentino Rossi. Lamborghini #6 has Jordan Pepper at the controls, clawing it's way back onto the lead lap or doing everything possible to do so.
Kevin Estre is just not catching Jules Gounon and the Porsche teams are slower because they are looking after their Pirelli tires. Trouble for Matt Campbell in another Porsche in the EMA entry, the #74 with a punctured tire. It's that sharp gravel. Campbell brings the EMA Motorsport car to the attention of the pit crew from 17th in the overall and there will be a driver change. Will it be Felipe Nasr or will it be Mathieu Jaminet? The lead gap is 11.5 seconds between Catsburg and Jules Gounon. Wow. One of the Lamborghini's off and on at Speaker's corner! Yours truly was taking a break for lunch, and we have had a change in the commentary box, the night shift with Martin Haven and Bruce Jones. Welcome, Martin and Bruce.
We have seen a lot of action with the BMW Rowe Racing team and a couple of other cars. The mass of humanity at Spa is amazing. The weather has been marvelous. We saw British GT last weekend. There are fans all over and there will be a concert and of course, the fireworks show. The weather is phenomenal. No drizzle. No fog. No torrential, Biblical rain. Bad weather here at Spa is truly vile. So, the lovely weather is a welcome sight. In the darkness, the lights are not picking out obstacles far enough ahead. I mean, it is a bugaboo. When Karrim Ojjeh went off, the car ahead of him hooked the ditch and he couldn't see with all the dust.
Nicky Catsburg leads this motor race by 21 seconds now. #90 and #163 were nearly hit by a penalty. We have track limit penalties and a few other things happening in the penalty department. We still have the track limits penalties, but the gravel traps help. The thing is, less experienced drivers will not be used to having gravel traps on the road, because younger drivers are so used to having pavement to catch them and then can keep going, but if you get into the gravel trap, you are stuck there and have to learn in junior formulae, to live with gravel traps. Finally, after seven and a half hours, this race is beginning to settle down. Loris Cabirou has lept to the top of the ladder from Formula 4 single seaters to GT4 and now up to GT3, running 42nd in the overall and Earl Bamber in 46th place, the Le Mans winner and prototype and GT maestro.
Henrique Chaves continues leading Pro-Am for McLaren as Maro Engel and Christopher Mies hit the pit lane, the next wave of pit stops. Maybe these two guys are out of sync on their strategy. Yours truly is back on sync with the race hours and Nicky Leutwiler is now leading the Am class in the #24 Herberth Motorsports Porsche. That team, we know, can run and win 24-hour races as we have seen them countless times in the Creventic 24 Hour Series. BMW to the lane as well Nicky Catsburg was up by 22 seconds. Nico Muller in the #46 Audi and Andrea Bertolini changing to a co-driver in the #52 AF Corse Ferrari. The #16 EBM Giga Racing entry is in, Stephen and Brenton Grove from Australia, two Aussie's and two Kiwi's, an Antipoedean team.
The third driver is from Malaysia, Adrian D'Silva I believe. Matthew Payne, Stephen Grove, and Brenton Grove, car #16 for Earl Bamber Motorsports. The Barwell Lambo pits as well. Nick Wittmer has the #28 BMW M4 GT3 in 57th place, sharing with Samantha Tan, Harry Gottsacker, and Maxime Oosten. Davide Rigon second, Raffaele Marciello third, and Kevin Estre next up ahead of Augusto Farfus I believe. Davide Rigon lapping fastest of all of them. Nico Muller, is on his fastest lap of the race in the #46. Christopher Mies in 13th has set his personal best, welcoming his son, Paul Mies, into the world today.
Maro Engel says that the action is hot and heavy and they came in under Full Course Yellow and got snookered. A long way to go. He did a double stint from daylight into darkness. Maximilian Buhk a former winner, he is now doing a double stint into the darkness. The mental fatigue of driving in the darkness is unbelievable. If you are in the final stint before yours, you might be called early especially if there is a safety car scramble. Points are allocated depending on which drivers are in the car and so drivers can rise and fall depending on if they enter all the races, or they can't do every race because of availability.
There are so many championships with GT3 cars around the world that it is hard for drivers to be running all the races. 270 kilometers (165 miles an hour) through the darkness here at Spa as Maxime Robin is in the lane handing over to Ulysses de Pauw in the #33 Audi running 47th in the overall. Charlie Eastwood is caboose on the field and half a dozen cars have retired from this motor race. Only three Aston Martin's remain in the race. They have had a torrid time in the lane, for The Heart of Racing. Maxime Soulet in the Bentley two cars ahead after Nigel Bailly was tipped into the gravel and the car has had a litany of troubles but is still going.
Farfus, Rigon, Marciello, Estre, and so on. Augusto Farfus for Rowe Racing, the Brazilian leads. The sole remaining healthy Aston Martin has Nicki Thiim at the controls. Poor old David Pittard and company are out of it. Davide Rigon in second. Three Iron Lynx Ferrari's including the Iron Dames in 27th place with Rahel Frey driving. Kevin Estre catching Raffaele Marciello and the top four are only 13 seconds apart. Sixth place is Nick Tandy, the last car that rolled off the grid at the start. 49 seconds away from the lead and two seconds away from fifth spot.
Augusto Farfus still in the lead. Instead of going out in Super Pole, I wonder if the Porsche team were spraying the car down withTeflon or coating the thing in lard or something. Who knows? Raffaele Marciello is catching Davide Rigon hand over fist. Augusto Farfus is half a stint apart from Davide Rigon who will have to pit soon as he is in traffic through the Bus Stop, flashing the lights at the Porsche. These cars are very much equal. At Le Mans or in IMSA, there are four different classes, but in theory here at Spa, every car is a GT3 car and they all have equal and identical pace.
Read the situation through the traff, but the experience levels are a big deal. Some folks have done very few endurance races. In Pouhon, there is a local yellow flag. Ah. Full Course Yello in 10 seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Full Course Yellow, now. Who has spun? Is that Gabriele Piana? That is one of the Haupt Racing Team entries. Oscar Tunjo is ten minutes down from the end of his stint and if he is at Stavelot he could come in soon. Davide Rigon will have to get into the lane. We have an Audi off the road and it is Lorenzo Patrese, 16 years old, with his dad Ricardo Patrese watching his son. Ricardo Patrese raced a Honda NSX here a few years back.
No comments:
Post a Comment