Spa ELMS (Belgium)
27 September 2016
The penultimate round of ELMS took place in the legendary track of Spa- Francorchamps. Suprisingly the weather this weekend was wonderful. During practices we didn’t encounter any problems but our lap times were not great. The same happened in qualifying. We finished in 16th place but we knew that our strong side was always our race speed. Most importantly we were ahead of the LMGTE cars. Overtaking them in the last races had cost us many valuable seconds. The strategy was simple as always- Kuba will start and drive a double stint, afterwards Jens will take over and go until the end. Already in the first lap the Safety Car had to be deployed. After restart Kuba was moving further up the pack. In the 1-hour mark we were already on the 8th place. Not long before the driver change the Safety Car was deployed again. This was very unfortunate for us because we needed only about 3 seconds more, which we lost the lap before due to the lapped LMGTE who driver that didn’t use his mirrors, to pass him. But we didn’t and this way we lost one whole lap to the crews in front and all the hard earned advantage to the guys behind. But our adventures didn’t stop there. Less than one hour before the end we were on the third place with a large gap. But then an LMGTE car messed with our race again. Jens was trying to get passed another lapped car, when his driver completely shut the door and drove into our LMP3, damaging the front wing. Afterwards Jens’s pace dropped slightly and despite his biggest efforts we crossed the line in 6th position. This our best result in ELMS this year and we are very happy but there is a slight dissatisfaction… If Kuba would manage to pass this Safety Car we would be celebrating a great second- place result.