Saturday Morning
Unfortunately there is no Warm Up this year scheduled, so under sunshine there is a rather quiet morning, slightly interrupted by two one make races. While Porsche Cup fielded only about a dozen of cars, Maseratis seemed to have a full field, which was not decimated much even by first turn, La Source, spins and collision. All in all we did not pay much of attention to that support programme at all. It is nowhere near the LMS hey-day of several years ago, when Classic Endurance Racing highlighted the practice day with their one hour enduro and national GT championships or lower CN-like prototypes or Radical added spice to the entire programme. Lack of really interesting support programme has some positive effect, especially for journalists that are able to do more work in only two days, while we do remember a full programme from Thursday afternoon, until later evening on Sunday, full pits and paddock all around and it was not easy to find some spare time, for reporting, photo sorting and chassis number hunting. This year well collected almost all chassis numbers. GTE and LMP2 were quite easy and straightforward. However with LMP1 team it is getting harder every year. It is actually almost impossible to get to the plated (actually Rebellion confirmed they have not got produced yet any - they have just 'first' and 'second' car built). With Porsche and Audi we had a good luck to talk to a person that was very helpful and told us the number. However so far three trips to the Toyota garage and paddock proved to be hugely unsuccessful and it is hard to say if have the good luck as we had last year to meet the correct person at the right time).
As we said, today it is pretty sunny, though still rather cold. The weather forecast says no rain today, even no clouds but it should not be warmer than some 12 degrees Celsius. The race promises to be rather interesting unless something unexpected happens. Weather should not influence the battle as it did in Silverstone, and all three team seemed to be very well matched during yesterday's sessions.
One bad news is that the provisional grid released late in the night and made available this morning lists only 27 cars. The one missing is the Rebellion number 13. The team claimed they would race it. We felt it is doubtful, they would be allowed to, after having not completed a single competitive, measured lap during entire day. On the other side, the rebuilt SMP Oreca is listed and apparently confirmed to race. What is strange is that the grid actually lists it in the middle of the field despite the car set no qualifying time. It seems that WEC adopted some lower series practice, i.e. sorting the cars more by classes than by actual qualifying performance. Hopefully, that rule will not apply with the season highlight; Le Mans 24 Hours, which is scheduled next month as the third race of the season.
Well, good news coming from Rebellion. They asked for a special permission to take part in the race despite having not completed sufficient number of laps, and according to an appropriate article they are allowed to start from the pit lane, behind entire field. Thus they were no listed on the grid. The car will be started by Andrea Belicchi.
Race Report
Probably the biggest crowd here in Spa since 2007 when we started our regular trips to Belgium was prepared almost an hour before the start, which was scheduled at 2:30 PM, so that it was not quite easy to find a good spectators place just before the formation lap. There was nothing unusual, all cars gridded well and also the start and first lap went without any issues. Neel Jani in the Porsche no.14 took an immediate lead followed by Nicolas Lapierre in the Toyota no.8. Timo Bernhard in the second Porsche, no.8, starting from the third row soon overtook Audi no.2 and Toyota no.7, which started from the second row.
Audis were a bit off pace, it was soon Porsche-Toyota-Porsche-Toyota with Jani well unchallenged ahead, and three Audis followed. Impressive run of Porsches was soon broken by an unexpected pit stop of the third running Bernard in no.20. The car was pushed into the garage. Exactly after two laps, it returned to the same position as it had been before. After the first series of pit stops, the Porsche no.14 stayed in front leading the race after the first hour six and half seconds of the Toyota no.8. Audis no.1 and no.2, mainly thanks to well organised pit stop moved to third and fourth (14 seconds behind leading Jani) very closely followed by the Toyota no.7, driven by Stéphane Sarazzin. Audi no.3 was lagging a bit by this time.
Rebellion no.12 was originally running behind three LMP2 cars but after first full hour Nick Heidfeld was just in front of the GTE field, led by two Professional Aston Martins followed by two PRO Ferraris. Manthey Porsches were keeping back at this stage of the race, allowing Richie Stanaway in the leading Amateur Aston Martin no.95 to view Porsche headlights in his mirrors at one hour mark. At this stage of the race it looked very well for the Aston Martin team. But their GTE meltdown in the PRO class would delegate them away from podium later in the race. Not that they would not finish the race, they were just delayed enough.
In fact all cars showed a lot of reliability during the race, there were no incidents, accidents, safety cars or anything that would prevent all gridded cars to see the chequered flag. The only car that actually retired was the Rebellion no.13, which started from the pit lane, one lap back and ran nicely for the first 90 minutes of the race. It unlapped itself and overtook several GT cars before the problems arose. Actually, it was about 2-3 seconds slower per lap than common LMP2 car and about 7 seconds quicker than the GTE field. Problems from yesterday returned. It then returned a few times to the race, covering only 9 further laps during next three hours and after 4 hours and 46 minutes it finally disappeared from the scene.
At the top, the Toyota was quicker during the second series of pit stops and moved to the lead. Porsche no.14 was keeping second position until middle of the race. Toyota no.7 was third during hours 2 and 3. But the Audi no.1 was not far behind. The other two Audis were however one lap back already by the middle of the race. During the fourth hour, unfortunately problems hit also Porsche no.14. Since then it happened from time to time that the car was running rather slowly for couple of laps before returning to its race speed. Apparently drivers were directed by the team, how to fix these issues. Anyway, the delay was significant, so that in two thirds of the race, this best Porsche no.14 was running one lap behind the leading Toyota no.8. Surprisingly the only car in the lead lap with Toyota was now Audi no.1, which had somehow strong running during the fourth hour.
The race was then rather settled, Toyota no.8 never challenged in its lead. Audi no.1 was keeping its second position through the hour 5, despite during pit stops, there were some temporary changes in positions, Porsche no.14 appearing among top 3, thankfully to slightly longer stints. After five hours, Toyota no.8 led by 55 seconds ahead of Audi no.1, which was however closely followed by Toyota no.7 (only three seconds at 5-hour mark). At this time, one hour before the finish, the Porsche no.14 had one pit stop less than other LMP1 factory cars. This fact helped the Porsche to be classified in the same lap as the leaders temporarily.
The final hour was mainly about the battle for the second position between Audi no.1 and Toyota no.7. As the finish was closer, it was apparent that unlike in the earlier stages of the race, the Audi now has the speed to keep the Toyota no.7 behind. Also later and thus shorter pit stop for the Audi help the situation and we finished the race with Toyota, Audi and Toyota on the podium, all 171 laps. The Porsche no.14, despite its irregular on-track solved problems finished 4th, one lap back, with Audi no.2 and no.3 further back (52 seconds and 1 lap respectively).
In LMP2 Morgan led for the most part of the race and won it. The Zytek, an ELMS entrant, after slower start settled second and finished 70 seconds behind the Morgan. Both of them just a single lap behind Rebellion, winning LMP1 Light class and especially finishing the test, which is the way the team called today's running. It was a good debut of the new car, which would ideally require some 4 month of testing and development, according to Oreca. Once the issues of no.13 are solved, it could be a good reliable car. It would just need more speed. At the moment, it has rather a very, very good LMP2 pace, rather than a LMP1 car pace. Hopefully their only direct championship competitor, Lotus, will be at Le Mans, so that there is more motivation for the nice Rebellion team later in the season.
At the end of the race there was also great battle in the GTE Pro race. The AF Corse Ferrari no.51 was in the lead, and was hard to catch, but the second running Ferrari no.71 was caught by the Porsche no.91 and it was a great all track battle. In fact the Ferrari driver desperately tried to keep the Porsche behind and he manage it for a couple of laps. Once the Porsche moved to front, the Ferrari had no chance to keep its pace.
Overall a good race, not a classic but the crowd, officially announced as 46000 over two days (not sure about the actual number for Saturday, we believe 40000 is likely) as a good promise for the future of the Spa race and WEC in general.
Final note: After the race our mission at Toyota was finally successful: The winning car was confirmed by a team member as chassis number 01 from 2014 while the third car was chassis three. We also verified that the crashed SMP Oreca was really rebuilt on a new chassis, actually number 08 was replaced by a new chassis 19. All chassis numbers can be found on the results/tech data pages.
