FIA GT Championship – TOTAL Spa 24 Hours – Round Up
A Tough One – But A Very Good One

A week after the Spa 24 Hours and we finally get around to rounding up that one. We found it tough: not tough in the real world sense of having to cope with Foot & Mouth Disease, floods or a Lewis Hamilton, but tough in our sense in that nothing seemed straightforward as we attempted to write about a 24 hour race at Spa – live.

After Le Mans this year, we were determined to take a day off to recover – but the problem arises that we spend a day travelling back to the UK anyway, so a second day with almost no content on dailysportscar and you might be getting a little twitchy for some material to read. So we flog on through the week, never really recovering – but at least the weekend after Spa was a quiet one (Monza’s FIA GTs followed Le Mans). So here we are – feeling almost recovered at last.

It was Michael Cotton who made the point, an hour or two into the race, that he felt “detached from the action”. The reasons were simple enough. There we were in the new F1 media centre – with no windows looking out onto the short straight between the new Bus Stop and La Source. Not one window! It was a solid wall. Who designs these things? Someone racing in the 24 Hours, apparently. We could look out the back, to see the cars from the dip at Eau Rouge, to half way up the hill – and that was it.

Then there were the timing screens – which were all but illegible, unless you stood as close as you could get to them. With older eyes, you certainly couldn’t sit down and make sense of them.

And the TV pictures: while Men & Motors was transmitting, the views of the action were superb, but when it wasn’t, we just had still views of the track. Ooh look, there’s a great battle flashing past the still camera at Eau Rouge…

And the layout of the paddock. In former years, the media centre was above the old pits (after La Source), with most of the teams occupying the pits beneath. This time, the teams were equally spread between the old and new pits: a tour of the paddock to gather news was basically a 75 minute trudge - all the way down to Peka Racing at the pit exit before Eau Rouge, then all the way back up to the top of the old pits, then up the steps to the new pits, and all the way back to almost the exit of the Bus Stop.

So it was time consuming, exhausting, frustrating – and the poor old photographers were abandoned on the far side of the circuit. No shuttle bus to bring them back, so we didn’t see David Lord for about eight hours. He wasn’t happy when he finally made it back.

Moans out of the way then – because as long as we could keep up with it, we had a brilliant race going on, especially at the front.

Bert Longin and the boys at PK Carsport had a point to prove after their disqualification at Oschersleben, and it was Longin and then Kumpen who completed the first pair of double stints in the C5-R – and they led. Longin was hunting Maseratis as early as Eau Rouge on the first lap, and he was mighty as he took on Vitaphone cars that weren’t quite in their element.

“For the first six or seven hours we were very competitive, but then we had a problem with a brake pipe,” said Bert afterwards. “The chance of winning got away from us there, as we spent around five or six minutes in the pits fixing the problem. Our mechanics did a great job, and Kurt Mollekens did a good job in diagnosing the problem, so we were able to fix the car as quickly as possible. At that point we were down in eighth position, very disappointing so we had to push, and we managed to come back. But during the rain we were not at the level that we needed to be at, we were not really effective on rain tyres. Working with Michelin we found a compromise, and the car was better. We’re happy with the podium but we’ll wait a little bit until after scrutineering because you never know what might happen!”

Nothing, fortunately. But five or six minutes lost was too much in this race.

“We came from eighth to third, we did our best, and in the end we are quite proud of this result,” added Anthony Kumpen. “The big secret was that we only ran with 96 litres of fuel so we had a very light car!”

“It was a 24 hours sprint race!” said Kurt Mollekens. “We had a good result at the end, the pace at the front was very fast, and we proved that we were able to be on the same pace as our competitors.”

Fred Bouvy couldn’t quite match the form of the other three, so combined with the delay, third was still an outstanding result in this company. And all the ‘Peka’ drivers had big smiles on their faces whenever we got down to the bottom end of the old pits.

The four manufacturers at the start in GT1 sooner or later became just two, with Corvettes and Maseratis occupying the top eight places – because for Aston Martin and Lamborghini, the event was an unmitigated disaster. The Jetalliance DBR9 led at six hours – and then stopped. The #22 BMS had already done the same (stopped – the first retirement, just 13 laps completed), while the #23 car endured the most fearful bashing, back (in practice) and front (race).

The team had worked tirelessly to repair all the damage incurred on Thursday, when the throttle stuck open. Babini and Davies led the charge in the race, but the surviving Aston Martin wasn’t quite on the pace – and then Diego Alessi had his almighty accident at Blanchimont.

With the two Lamborghinis in accident (Bouchut) and driveshaft (#28) trouble, they never featured – so it was a straight fight between four (in effect three) Corvettes and four (in effect three) Maseratis.

It was the Carsport Corvette that was beautifully set-up for Spa, and that provided the opportunity for Marcel Fassler to shine, wet or dry. He wasn’t the only driver, by any means, to excel, but sometimes circumstances conspire to highlight one particular driver: last year it was Eric van de Poele, this time Marcel Fassler.

“Marcel Fassler did a really huge job for the team in the rain,” commented Jean-Denis Deletraz.

“I must say that, for me, all the credit goes to Marcel Fässler,” added Mike Hezemans. “When it was raining we were sat in our motorhome and we said to Marcel: ‘Please keep going!’ He was so quick during the rain that we could hardly believe it. He spent a long time on track, and we have to thank him. For me it was nice to have the pole but all of the credit goes to him. He had to stay in and stay in and we were thinking ‘How long can he drive?’ Normally I’m quite good in the rain but Marcel was on another planet.”

Indeed he was, but… “without Eric van de Poele’s spin, we could not have won, it was that close.”

When the Hezemans / Deletraz / Fassler / Gollin quartet had been mooted many weeks ago, before Mike Hezemans could even confirm that it would definitely happen, he’d suggested that “we can win the race with these drivers, we’ll be really strong”. Jean-Denis Deletraz wisely completed just two stints, and left it to the others to drive the bulk of the race – which eventually led to two of the most bizarre questions at the press conference. The same ‘journalist’ who seemed to want to make a point about Deletraz’s two stints (completed at a good pace, with no dramas), also wanted to get across a ridiculous point about drivers cutting across the kerbs (“cheating” he said) at Raidillon. Mike Hezemans dealt with that one very well.

Fabrizio Gollin was fault-free and fast – but it was Fassler in the winning Corvette and Pedro Lamy in the #1 Vitaphone Maserati who stood out on this day. But the Portuguese star didn’t really come into his own until at least a third of the way into the race.

“Oversteer,” he said on Saturday evening (did I mean to write down understeer?). “The car has changed since qualifying. My feeling is that it is because of the rain. Thomas (Biagi, in the #2 car) was very unhappy. But we cannot change the set-up.”

But some careful choices of tyres, plus the track ‘rubbering up’ provided most of the answers – although the MC12s were perhaps never quite as perfectly tuned in to the Spa track as they have been in the past. Vitaphone needed some Carsport mistakes on strategy, and some pure bad luck for the Dutch/German team with safety cars, to initially get on terms with the #5 Corvette, and then find itself a lap ahead – at which point Deletraz had accepted that the race was lost.

Eric van de Poele was suitably humble about his spin into the gravel which lost the race, an incident which was such a contrast with his performance a year before when he won the race.

“First of all I would like to congratulate the winners,” said the charming Belgian. “They were so disappointed last year that I must find something for them this year! But seriously, the conditions were really hard, you tried your best, you tried to be on the limit. I made a little mistake at the end of my last double stint, so I have to apologize to the team. We tried our best. I want to congratulate Michael Bartels for his team; the Vitaphone Racing Team is stronger than last year, the preparation for the race was incredible, and I’m sure they are going to fight for the Championship, and I hope the end of the season will be good for them.”

“We started the race with a lot of understeer, which made the car very difficult to drive,” remarked Pedro Lamy. “But then we found a way to adjust things with the tyres and the car was better, so we were able to fight. We were starting to catch them up, and then with the rain we were able to take the lead. I’m very happy. The team did a great job. Altogether, we made a good combination, and we always made the right decision. I have to say that I was really impressed by the Vitaphone Racing Team. It was a real pleasure to be here.”

And it was a real pleasure to admire the likes of Fassler, Lamy, Gavin, Franchi and others, driving so hard, in such dreadful weather on Sunday, on such a magnificent track. This was mighty stuff.

The suggestion that Luc Alphand is about to buy a second C6.R is at odds with some of the underlying trends in Europe, at least as far as the FIA GT Championship is concerned. Joost Custers has been hinting for some weeks that maybe the GT1s (and 2s) have a limited life expectancy, but the teams seem to have persuaded Stephane Ratel that they need to run their GT1s for another year or two yet.

Autosport floated the story last week that Ratel is considering something referred to as ‘GT3-Plus’, to presumably replace GT1 and GT2. Some GT3s are already almost as fast as GT2s, so some regulations later this year could see this new category take over in 2009 (or 2010?). The cars would be much cheaper than either GT1s or GT2s, both of which are very expensive to run. If this all comes about, the trick will be to prevent the new cars becoming more and more expensive to run.

The irony is that the GT1 entry at Spa and Le Mans was very impressive, although the 14 at Spa only came from four marques. Longer term, there are almost no new GT1s on the horizon, so perhaps something has to be done.

Joost Custers has rounded up G2 and G3 already, but it’s worth reinforcing the point that Porsche numbers dominated G3 in particular: the 997 is the chosen car for 24 hours, but over one hour, the current model is just not quick enough. Porsche is planning a new GT3 for 2008 – and it’s hard to imagine it being anything other than more expensive than the current car. Costs in GT3 are heading upwards already. It doesn’t take long, does it?

GT2 – and what a contrast with the 2006 Spa 24 Hours. The 997s were brand new then, and rather fragile. Porsche has solved all the problems such that they’re now very reliable. So are the drivers.

Gary Horrocks called and, not having had time to read about the race on dsc, asked how the Ferraris had got on.

“What is it with these Ferrari drivers?” was his response, to being told that three of the top four 430s had crashed out.

Porsches’s factory driver system seems to work much better than whatever system Ferrari is deploying. Having one of the top cars led by Collard and Lieb, and supported by the impressive Malucelli, turned out to be a recipe for success, especially as the BMS car seemed to have no delays at all. Norbert Singer even pulled a fast one on AF Corse and had his trio score maximum points at every stage of the race.

Emmanuel Collard: “We were really pleased that the car had no problems at all during the race; all three of us were just running as fast as we could and everything went well. I don’t really have much to say, because everything just went so well!”

No dramas at all then – a team performing at its peak, everyone pulling together. What a contrast with some of the F1 nonsense lately.

“It’s my first win in FIA GT today, and I’m very happy,” added Matteo Malucelli. “We didn’t have any problems with the Pirelli tyres or with the car, everything was perfect, and I’m just very happy.”

“This is one of my favourite circuits and it’s fantastic to win here again,” said 2003 (overall) winner Marc Lieb. “I had really great team mates, and a great team; it was just fantastic to be here, supporting them, and especially getting 20 points for the championship for them. I was just here to drive and to make no mistakes, and I’m very happy. We’re definitely strong in the wet, we have a rear engine which suits us a lot better, and we can use the whole traction of the car. We also saw today during the warm up that the car is very quick in the rain, and that we really need it to be wet to be competitive with the GT1 cars. It’s nice to drive and easy to drive in the rain.”

Raymond Narac was pleased enough with second: “Our main goal was to get on the podium, although we had quite a few little technical problems, like punctures - we had four punctures in all. I think the start of the race went well for us but we got a puncture early on, and we had other technical problems too. After a burst tyre, we struggled to get back up from sixth place. It’s really just a great result for us, since we were really aiming for the podium.”

Leo Machitski was probably even happier to finish third, in the Tech 9 car: “It is a great result for me and Sean and for Tech 9, for our first 24 hour race, a great result for the team. Our goal was to go until the finish, and if possible to finish on the podium! So our goal is achieved. I’d like to say thank you to Tech 9 Motorsport. They did a great job. We started last after an engine problem in qualification and warm-up, but that was OK for the race. Thanks also to Porsche for the support we had.”

“I’m really really happy,” added regular partner Sean Edwards, who didn’t go off on the oil that claimed Dirk Muller. “Leo did a great job, the team do not make any mistakes, and Sascha gave us his huge experience. We did not have any problems, the Porsche was perfect.”

“Last year we ran this car here for the first time, we had a lot of problems, but this year it went fine for all the Porsches,” said the experienced voice of Sascha Maassen. “That is a good sign, the car is well developed. I did not drive it since Spa last year, so it was interesting to see how good the car is now. This is my home race, so I’m always happy to be here, and I hope I will come back next year and finish on the podium again.”

Michael Bartels was reluctant to commit to the whole FIA GT Championship next year, but promised to bring the Maseratis back to Spa. Meanwhile, one significant team is likely to be in the Le Mans Series next year, while another is planning a prototype effort (not much longer to wait for details of that announcement from Germany and Italy, but be prepared for a surprise part of that package when it comes).

Whatever anyone thinks of the two hour FIA GT format, the Championship’s blue riband event has produced superb, consecutive 24 hour races packed with incident - and with quite stunning races to the finish.
MC & GG