Looking forward to the Total 24 Hours of Spa

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Just a few days left before the Belgium town of Spa Francorchamps is descended upon by ten of thousands of race fans for the start of proceedings for this years running of the Total 24 Hours of Spa, a race that features another very sizeable grid of over seventy GT3 specification race cars from almost every manufacturer there is.

Of course the start of the whole SRO Speedweek package starts today with initial track running of the British GT Championship round at the circuit with all of its associated support races. The main GT3/GT4 race for them will be this Sunday afternoon - a race that will be stream live for the first time across the SRO social media channels.

The 2019 Spa 24 will feature (hopefully) no fewer than six Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT3's from each of Garage 59, R-Motorsport and Oman Racing with TF Sport full AMR Partner teams. Five of these cars are full season entries with a third car being entered into this continuation of the Blancpain GT Endurance Cup season by R-Motorsport to make their contribution up to three cars.

Whilst the full Pro cars driver line ups remain the same, the Silver Cup, Pro-Am and Am Class entries get an additional driver for the event, all of whom you will be aware of through their continued AMR activities elsewhere in the world. The cars full driver line ups have been confirmed as being:-

#59 Garage 59 Pro Come Ledogar / Andrew Watson / Jonny Adam
#188 Garage 59 Am Alex West / Chris Goodwin / Chris Harris / Ross Gunn

#62 R-Motorsport - Pro Matthieu Vaxivierre / Matt Parry / Maxime Martin
#76 R-Motorsport - Pro Class Marvin Kirchhofer / Jake Dennis / Alex Lynn
#762 R-Motorpsort - Silver Cup Ricky Collard / Hugo de Sadeleer / Aaro Vainio / Ferdinand von Habsburg

#97 Oman Racing with TF Sport Pro-Am Class Salih Yoluc / Charlie Eastwood / Ahmad Al Harthy / Nicki Thiim

Track activity for the 24 hours begins on Tuesday with the Bronze driver test, three hours specially set aside for the least experienced racers to get familiar with their cars and race track surroundings without the 'inconvenience' of faster, more able drivers racing either side of them.

Wednesday afternoon/evening sees the customary parade into Spa Francorchamps town centre where the race cars are actually driven along the public highway there and back from the circuit.

Thursday sees the first fully open circuit time for the entire grid with up to five hours of track time being made available for Free Practice, Qualifying and Night Practice.

The preliminary activities are then concluded on Friday night with Super Pole for the top thirty runners after Qualifying the day before.

Then on Saturday comes the start of the race itself at 16:30hrs local

What is amazing to read is that Aston Martin has not won this event since 1948! Thats simply a massive period of time to compete and come away empty handed. The AMR line up at this years event is probably the biggest that has come forward to date and depending upon weather and the situation on track there is certainly no reason why an AMR running cannot contend for the overall race win in addition to very possible class wins.