The website of this event had the following prescription of the event.
“”The leading race, the star event, the one that everyone is waiting for, is indisputably the “Spa Six Hours Endurance Race”.
Indeed, not only does this race count epoch-making cars in its line-up that make the most indifferent among us tremble with excitement, but it also demands incredible performances of those respectable racing cars, which have all the teams holding their breath until the famous chequered flag has fallen.””
And it was holding breath for a few laps.
The qualification went really well and we started at 9th place on the grid. The first 2 hours Peter van Hoepen really pushed the car and he came in the pit lane a little bit before the planned strategy. He said that in some corners he was alreadywithout fuel. There where no problems with the car but Maarten the team manager decidedto change the left front tyre. I was ready to change the wheel and it went pretty smooth. Peter got out of the car to give the wheel to Alex Weavers.
Alex was doing steady lap times but he was a little bit slower the Peter. Because slower lap times safe fuel we tryed to let him drive longer to get back on our strategy again. But that didn’t worked out completely. He came in with the complain that he heared a weird sound in the drive train. We jacked the car up and saw that some bolds of the drive shaft where getting loose. after we fixed that we pushed him back into the pit lane but when Robert den Otter tryed to start the car the engine made a weird noise. After a quick check together with Huub Ritsen (V8 engine specialist) we discovered that a rocker brokedown in the engine. He Changed the Rocker really fast and the engine was running again. The hole pit crew was working as fast as possible and with this pit stop we lost 26 min.
Robert started driving and after a few laps it was getting darker and darker. But that didn’t made a difference for Robert. He managed to do really fast lap times even when he had not a lot of visibility. After the long pit stop we dropped down to the 44th position. Robert drove all the way up to 16th place. The last 40 min he was the fastest driver on the track and managed to drive below 3 min in the dark.
The last 15 min where really killing for the crew along the guard rail. We knew that the car was almost out of fuel and that it would be really tight to make it. Robert finished and that was a big relief for everybody.
It was my first time at the Spa Six Hour race and i would like to come back again.
