Side by side down the hill. It is all kicking off again after the fireworks display and after I took the quickest break possible for a sausage and chips and a coffee. Froggatt should give up the place and now Maximilian Gotz is Froggatt's next target and Froggatt's up to second place! Marco Sorensen in the Comtoyou Racing Aston Martin is in the lead of the motor race, trusty old #7. Frogatt up to Blanchimont, has to be careful, on the dry part of the road. It is not down to the weather or down to tire performance. The Aston Martin has marginally less grip and now, Frogatt stays in second. On a drier section, it is 1.9 seconds, the gap through La Source. Rain lights on. Frogatt should be all over Sorensen like a fat pigeon on a chip. But the traction out there is very skittish.
Equally, Chris Froggatt is going for class position, as a Bronze Cup car. I don't think a Bronze Cup car is going to win this event but on merit he can still lead. into the braking zone for Piff Paff, Frogatt is reeling in Sorensen, that Aston Martin looking so skittish in this rain! It is a chance for Frogatt to lead the motor race on merit. Frogatt there, trying to make the move in the final chicane. Frogatt might lose second place to Maximilan Gotz in the Mercedes. "The call is yours on tires, and when we box we'll do a driver change to Nikki Thiim." That is what Sorensen is told.
Froggatt has moved back to third. Martin Konrad has been released from the medical center and he is just fine. Thank heavens! All arms and elows for Froggatt through Les Combes. The Mercedes is still in the fight. My heavens! This is hot stuff! In the rain, through Pouhon, the Mercedes has the grip, the traction, the bite. Can Froggatt reclaim second spot from the Mercedes? That is the question, and he runs wide going into Courbe Paul Frere. Car #72 and #96, ten second time penalty added to the next pit stop for causing a collision. Hello to George Kurtz. He says it has been start and stop and getting through the rain, the penalties, the shunts. It is a survival game.
They don't have a driver order at CrowdStrike by Riley in the Mercedes. They just want to stay around before the end. The rain might just come. Kurtz had a flat tire and got spun off by the #888 Mercedes. The repave of Spa has been good but they didn't quite get to corners ten through 13. Do you stay on the dryline or the wet line? That is the big question. The new surface has sheared the surface of the Pirelli tires off. Three weekends in a row for Kurtz of racing in the rain and Nicky Catsburg is at the controls of the #4 car right now. Kurtz is the President of CrowdStrike, the presenting sponsor of this race, on the track with the best drivers in the world and of course the history with the 100th anniversary, the centenary, this year.
Adapting between a prototype and a GT3 car, it is pretty easy according to Kurtz. Now we check in with the #998 BMW M4 GT3. This is Augusto Farfus in fourth spot. Understand the differences in the car between GT3 and prototypes. So, in the points standings it is still Farfus, Harper, and Hesse leading with the rest of the results. We'll talk about points after the race. The rain has arrived, and Lucas Auer has spun off the road. During the night, we are going to hear from Martin Haven and Bruce Jones for the night shift. So, grab the coffee and hunker down with us as the night is well underway. Marco Sorensen leads from Maxi Gotz and Ricard Feller.
15 minutes taken in the pits for Aston Martin and the #9 Mercedes and the #99 Audi. 18 minutes and change for the #48 Mercedes which slithered off the circuit. The rain is coming. We'll see what is going to happen next as they accelerate from Les Combes and back down the mountain. 127 laps completed by Marco Sorensen so far, 553 miles. We'll see David and John tomorrow morning and now we are welcoming Martin Haven and Bruce Jones to the booth. John was right, the opening lap worked out well but we have lost a third of the field and the ink in the marker of doom might be gone soon, the Sharpie of doom, and it hasn't rained yet.
Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen have been regulars to Aston Martin for so long. Good night, John. We'll see you in the morning, mate. If they gave a clown like me a Hypercar or a GT3 car, I wouldn't know how to drive the damn thing fast. But the pit crews and the drivers, they are flying right now. So, now, Nicki Thiim will get into the car. Mattia Drudi are heading into the pit lane. Thiim is in the car. Keep an eye on the #998 BMW M4 GT3, the Farfus, Harper, Hesse, Rowe Racing entry. 62 minutes is your maximum green flag driving stint line to line.
But they had 67-minute stint potential with the safety cars and we've got the points slice of the pie to come. BMW #32 went to slicks and then back to wets and the reverse for the #46 WRT BMW of Valentino Rossi, and "The Doctor" became the crash test dummy. Jordan Pepper in the Lamborghini has taken yet another pit stop and they've done so for tires as Augusto Farfus is in with a very wet windscreen. The pit crew is cleaning it. There's gravel bullet holes in the screen. That car is still on Pirelli slick tires.
The #48 Mercedes is also in. So, we have our mates Martin Haven and Bruce Jones taking us through the night. This is the centenary of course of the Spa 24 Hours. 100 years ago, cars looked so different, the most basic things you can imagine and now we have these high tech prototype and GT missiles. It's amazing! Maxi Gotz leads the motor race as our pal Bruce Jones has an A4 paper pad to write down details on all the cars. Things are really changing. Ferrari #51 of David Rigo getting the windscreen cleaned up. Because of the safety cars, Full Course Yellows, blah, blah, blah, it is very hard to tell who is where on the fuel situation.
Don't give up track position. That would be insane. Le Mans, Daytona, Spa, 20 hours to stay on the lead lap and four hours, try to win the race. Hello to Ryan Myrehn in the pit lane who has Marco Sorensen. Slight adjustment on Ryan's microphone, only audible in the truck. OK. We'll have to see what he has to say to our mate Ryan in the lane. The first slice of the points pie has been awarded and we'll have more later after halfway and at the very end for the top ten in each of the classes. But you need to survive to get that final pie slice.
We have not had the form found yet and we've seen a handful of incidents where the big names have been dropping like flies. With this weather, and heavy rain coming, they had a red flag in football, in soccer, a game rain delay. But now, we are hitting more rain and we had Martin Konrad upside down on his lid during the safety car to rejoin the queue! That was stone cold bonkers! Everyone is peachy though. They've been through the medical center and cleared by the doctors. So, we have another car off the circuit.
It is a blue and orange car. It is a McLaren I think, and it could be the Benji Goethe, Dean MacDonald, Tom Gamble entry, the #159 but Gamble is back on the road. Not to worry. Not to worry. The tarmac makes it impossible to lose time. Let's bring back gravel traps. Trouble is, gravel gets all over the road and the cars stay buried until they are rescued by the cranes. In endurance racing like FIA World Endurance, British GT, here, the 25-hour Fun Cup race, the Spa 24 Motos motorcycle race, things get crazy! I wonder if we will soon reprise Ryan and Marco's interview. We are under Full Course Yellow currently and the camera crews, ladies and gents, have your rain gear, your ponchos and your brollies.
Heavy rain and storms expected in the Ardennes tonight. So we'll be on our toes just like at Le Mans two weeks ago. OK. We have our conversation with Ryan and Marco back on. Marco tells us that Nicki is dealing with a ton of rain and this is just like Le Mans was in the wet on slick tires. It is a difficult situation. How do you keep your head for when the sun comes up tomorrow? Keep it on the road and that is tough to do. A driver is not sure how wet it is. You as a driver are taking risks. During the fireworks, Marco Sorensen was in the car, the paper from the fireworks was all over the front grillework of the car.
This is our mate Ryan Myrehn's third trip to Spa in 2019, 2021, and now in 2024. Ford Mustang #64 has just received a new nose. Dennis Olsen from Norway at the wheel of it and maybe they wanted a new nose. Actually, the Belgian, Fred Vervisch has taken over. That Mustang has the highest top speed terminal velocity at the top of Eau Rouge and the Kemmel straightaway. Ross Gunn in the Walkenhorst Motorsports Aston Martin has been on an upward trajectory but there is a little damage to the car. Ross Gunn, Henrique Chaves, and David Pittard. From the lead, the #60 2 Seas Motorsports Mercedes-AMG GT3 had just come in.
Frankie Bird sharing with Lewis Williamson, Isa Al Khalifa, and Martin Kodric. Some teams are going to be looking at surviving and we have a track sweeping tractor taking the water off the circuit. "I lost the rear in Eau Rouge, with the #888 car. The vehicle was hard to get out of. But I am OK coming from the medical center" says Martin Konrad, the Austrian, who was upset, disoriented being upside down and blinded by the dark! Scary business! We have had a jet dryer on the road I think to move the gravel.
We are still into Full Course Yellow. The Race Director is trying to give people equal opportunity to come into the pit lane if need be. Also, once you are more than a handful of minutes in we swap to safety car conditions. The rain isn't as heavy as it was and parts of the track have steam coming off, of the new surface anyhow. Black tarmac absorbs heat. I think they resurfaced the fast lane and not the apron. 17 degrees track temperature, or air temperature, 22 degrees track temperature and of course that is Celsius, not Fahrenheit. 17-22 Fahrenheit would be wintertime and it would be too cold to even start a race car. Now, everyone is just staying on the road and the rain is heavier here at La Source than it is upwards from Eau Rouge.
Pure Racing and Joel Sturm are the erstwhile leaders in the Pure Racing Porsche 911 GT3R. Sturm leads in a storm. Hehe. He did the same at Le Mans in GT3 as well. Coincidence? No. It rained at Le Mans, too. Sturm could be the rain meister. Ugo de Wilde says that the gambles have been taken o tire choice at the Sainteloc Audi team. Some drivers are hoping for a safety car as we are seeing more and more spray on the road. It is so dark here at Spa at night but with the rain even more so. With the new pavement, it is a major question mark for everyone.
Things did happen with some rain at the Speed Week last weekend for British GT. In the Prologue test it was dry as a bone. George Kurtz told us that in the dry, the surface is super grippy. The British GT boys said that it was pretty good in the wet but there's been lots of rubber down on the road since the other races last weekend. My goodness. The track temperature is still warm. We don't have a breeze or a wind to blow the rain through the forest. I must bring the rain at night here at Spa when I step in to write about this race on a yearly basis! But, I digress. We are half an hour from midnight and at hout eight we will be at 12:30 A.M. Sunday morning.
We are not ready for a restart by any means yet so I will just bore you with my observations. The safety car driver is of course, Marc Duez, rally driver, GT racer, and a man who manages a company doing track days and teaching people who to high performance drive. Duez is a three-time winner at the Spa 24 Hours and has done will in the Ardennes Rally. Duez is a Walloonian Belgian and not Flemish. It is different between the French side of Belgium and the Dutch side. At this speed with small amounts of standing water, it is boring but it is slow at 80 clicks, 50 miles an hour in old money. The Pirelli slick tires are stone cold and ought to be carved out of mahogany. Wooden wheels, like antique cars.
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