In an event that has seen Mother Nature throw her best at them, or is
that her worst, the teams and drivers just dealt with it as they wish
to reach their goal and even Thursday's heavy rain storms could not get
them down.
This year's FIA GT Championship 24 Hours of Spa took off with a 39 GT1,
GT2, G2 and G3 cars ready for the contest to see who would reach the
goal: the top step of their respective class podium. Of course the real
honor will go to the overall winners. After 12 hours of racing under
some very trying circumstances, it is a three way battle for the overall
and GT1 class victory.
One of the local Belgium photographers, Dirk de Jager, said, "this is a
seriously great race this year", while he continued to take fantastic
images of the race action and the fireworks -- both on and off the
track.
The No. 4 Pekaracing nv Corvette Z06 found themselves at the 12-hour
mark in the lead over the No. 3 Selleslagh Racing Team, also in a
Corvette Z06. The gap was just over three seconds and in endurance
racing, that is not a major hurdle.
The difference to the No. 2 Vitaphone Racing Team Maserati MC was 6.597
seconds. All three have a nice advantage of at least eight laps over the
rest of the GT1s.
Leading in G2 and fifth overall is the No. 111 Phoenix Racing Audi R8
LMS team. At the moment, they have a two-lap edge over the best of the
GT2 teams.
Leading GT2 is the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari F430 with their No. 50 team
car close at hand. The nearest challenge to the AF Corse Ferraris is No.
97 Porsche 911 GT3 RS from Brixia Racing, two laps adrift.
The pole winning G3 team, the No. 121 Matech GT Racing Ford GT maintains
the lead with a very nice cushion back to their team car.
Still there are 12 hours to go and while the margins for some may be
large, all it takes is mechanical problems or contact damage to close
up the gap.
The No. 55 CRS Racing can attest to that fact when they had tyre issues
on their Ferrari F430, not once but twice and as they were making their
comeback, the rain came down in buckets, slowing thir efforts. Of course
all teams had to slow down on the pace. Luckily many saw it coming and
had wet tires already on or in the pits for a quick stop to make the
switch from dry to wet.
CRS's Chris Niarchos was ready for the downpour. "We clearly had an
issue with the tyres in the opening stint. Once we changed them for a
new set Tim's times immediately went up by four seconds a lap. I jumped
in once Tim had completed a double stint and I was able to maintain a
good pace, just one and a half seconds off the leaders. Spa then did
what it does best and it poured down!"
One team out early was the No. 8 Corvette Z06. Roberto Streit was okay but
the damage to the Sangari Team Brazil did the car in and out of the event
with only 55 laps completed. They started the 24 hour contest in fourth in
GT1.
Twelve to go and its still anyones race at the moment...
