Entry and History
This year the Spa 1000 Kilometres event is characterised by two changes compared to last years. First it is run to a full 6 hour distance, instead of traditional 1000 kilometres, but the title is kept. The reason is that entire race should be broadcasted by Eurosport live and for timed race it is possible to predict end of the race much more precisely than for the distance-defined race finish. The other change is that the race is now not only part of the European-based Le Mans Series but also new worldwide Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC). A bit complicated name for the championship the should became a new World Sports Car Championship in the coming years but as a result of the joined championship race we have the largest every entry seen in Spa 1000 km ever, including Group C or even golden era of late sixties and early seventies. Originally it was announced as many as 62 cars could enter the race. First released entry list showed 60 cars but then 4 LMP1 cars were dropped from the entry.
Two of them are new LMP1 Aston Martin, which seems to be a complete failure. Remember our disappointment when they announced it is not going to be a coupe. Later when it was released, many people told us it is one of the ugliest LMP cars built over the last decade. And when it appeared on the track, the performance was even more disappointing than the look of the cars. We still hope that the team can sort the cars out to race them in Le Mans, hopefully ahead of the LMP2 field but there are hardly many people that still believe petrol-fuelled Aston Martin could take on the challenge of Audi and Peugeot diesels anytime soon.
Other missing cars are Oreca Hybrid of Hope Polevision Racing due to technical difficulties and one of LMP1 Oak Pescarolos after damage during Le Mans test. So final entry list just before the race meeting counted 56 cars but for some reason Guess Racing Lola Coupe did not arrive once again, after doing the same at Paul Ricard. Will they appear at all? Definitely the team is far from being reliable in their plans and announcements. We will see what they can show later in the season, hopefully at least the nice ex-Racing Box cars.
Thanks to the introduction of the new ILMC at Spa we have here a very strong field of factory prototypes despite Aston Martin withdrawal. Three new Audi coupe, which are making their race debut here tomorrow, against three new factory Peugeots supported by older Oreca-run car make the podium for traditional Le Mans Series teams almost impossible. The bad thing is that some cars are entered only to LMS and some only to ILMC, which makes the situation more complicated and some cars from the same class would not actually run for points against each other. But still better situation than if the next year we would see two separate races, each of them containing about 30 cars. We hope that the two organising bodies can find a common solution to save the level of the race in the future at current standards.
Practice Sessions
Altogether three free practice sessions of total of 180 were scheduled but in the end many of the red flags dropped the time almost by one third but it was still enough to make it clear that the new Audi coupés are not only very nice looking cars but also very quick. Actually it seems that much quicker than the new Peugeots. Of the three sessions only twice the Peugeots made it into TOP3 and never better than third. Even worse for them, Audis could achieve 2:02 and make it under 2:04 rather easily while Peugeots rarely got under 2:05. There was more than 1.5 seconds of difference between the best time of Audi and Peugeot.
There were usually the two Rebellion Lolas following the factory diesels and lone Oreca Peugeot... thus making it coupes at top 9 positions. Only other LMP coupe in the field was Level 5 Lola but it seems that with its Honda power it is out of the game. In the end, during the final, Friday's session, the Oak Pescarolo could set a better time than one of the Rebellion Lolas (no13) could during all sessions but we still have all nine coupes among the top 10 cars. And it is extremely unlikely that a presence of factory Aston spiders would change anything about that. So would the coupes be the future of LMP1 as ACO originally intended since 2010?
One of the bad news from Thursday was an accident caused by Lamy in Peugeot no.9 making the new HPD LMP2 car of the RML, last year champions, a write-off, making the grid of available cars for the race down to 54. Another big accident was Rebellion Lola no.13. Fortunately, as well as the Peugeot, it could be repaired over night.
Peugeot failure in qualifying
While there was no red-flagged LMP session so far, we really could not understand the Peugeot tactic, somebody called it even a 'strategy', to wait until end of the session to appear on the track at all while Audis already easily occupied top three grid spots. The result of this bad decision at Peugeots is that the best car should start from 13th position, another car from 18th position and the Peugeot no.8 should be around the spot fifty!! We remember the team playing the bad game with late qualifying attempt already in 2008 when a red flag was shown and then slower Audis were at the top. While in 2008 the session was restarted and Peugeots could move ahead, this time the reason for the red-flag was more serious and the restart of the session did not happen. In fact Oak LMP1 Pescarolo crashed into the barriers so heavily that it had to be repaired for a long time and even the next scheduled race for Radical sports cars was called off.
The Oak Pescarolo seems to be damaged too heavily to take part in the tomorrow's race: Very bad news for the nice team after their other car being non-arrival for the same reason - accident. With a complete strategic disaster at Peugeot, the make honours were hopefully satisfied by the private Oreca Peugeot in the fourth spot, but almost 4 second off the pole set by Timo Bernhard in Audi no.1. Rebellion Lola no.12 is next. But the sister car no.13 made the same mistake as factory Peugeot and joined the session too late and the result is: not classified.
We hoped for an interesting race, at least at the beginning when Peugeots could take on Audis, despite being really slower here but now it seems that before Peugeots can appear behind them, they would not really be in touch with them. At least we hope that the Peugeot drivers would not try to get behind Audis too quickly to collide another car on the way, and there is no another write-off. Over 50 cars is a very nice number but may be too many for this track. Let us hope we are mistaken and the race will be free of heavy accidents seen here during the last year's race and also these practice sessions.
