FIA GT1 - Spa - Saturday Morning Notes

Steady rain started as we arrived at the circuit this morning just as the FIA GT1 runners emerged for their half hour warm-up at 08:30, the Spa 24 Hours runners will follow this session with a short 20 minute warm-up.

It seems that there are no dramas to report from the GT1 runners (aside from the over night disqualification of the #13 Corvette from third place yesterday. One correction though to the race report from yesterday - The Michael Bartels torpedo attack on the #22 Nissan and #12 Corvette was rather oddly on the exit to, and not the entry into, La Source.  Bartels apparently apologised to a rather annoyed Jamie Campbell Walter (but only after JCW went down to Vitaphone for a post stint 'discussion'!

The #92 G2 Racing Ferrari is a withdrawal from the 24 Hours after a substantial accident in qualifying reduced it to little more than an amorphous lump - no damage fortunately to the driver but no chance of #92 seeing further action.

With some connection problems yesterday we have a delay to catching up with the detail from the SRO press conference yesterday but for now lets just report that Stephane Ratel confirmed that the GT1 event in South Africa had been postponed until 2011 "due to issues over the homologation of the circuit on the streets of Durban."

“Durban has been more complicated that forecast. Initially we had a deal with the municipality of Durban to use the circuit previously used by AIGP.

“We had the walls, the bridge and the fence, so they only had to put the circuit back in place. The first complication came from the fact that they destroyed part of the circuit to construct a World Cup football stadium. So a new design was done and then the FIA became much more careful on the street circuit design and after various communications it needed a complete re-design of the circuit to make it happen.

“So even if the municipality agreed to do the work, it couldn't be done in the requested remaining time, so the event has been postponed till 2011.”

The brand new Circuito de Navarra in the north-west of Spain has been lined up as a replacement with a date set at 24-25 October.

“They have very good facilities and we think that it will be an ideal replacement.”