Glorious weather has so far benefitted the thirty-six strong Hypercar and LMGT3 grid which of course again features two Aston Martin powered Valkyries within the top-flight class and two Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3’s in the other – all fielded by the Heart of Racing and the Racing Spirit of Leman teams.
Inter-round Balance of Performance changes within the Hypercar class saw the #007 and #009 cars benefit from a low-end power increase and weight decrease all at the expense of a reduction within their maximum available power stint parameters which the team had hoped would put them in good stead at this speed circuit and in full dress rehearsal for next month’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Free Practice had kind of realised those expectations with both cars not featuring at the wrong end of the timing screens although a late off for the #007 at the end of the protracted FP2 session last night saw their preparations take on some emergency repairs after Tom Gamble backed the car into the tyre wall at turn ten.
Going into this morning’s final Free Practice session, there were no obvious ill-effects from that incident last night with both cars completing the full hour-long session.
Qualifying this afternoon was, however, another matter as despite progressive improvements from both Harry Tincknell in the #007 (with Tom Gamble) and Alex Riberas in the #009 (with Marco Sorensen), the teams progressive steps so far with their new chassis saw both cars again feature at the tail end of the class come the end of the session.
With a best lap time of 2:02:282 for the #007 and 2:02:403 for the #009, tomorrows race will start again from P17 and P18 respectively, but with both cars running to within one second of nearly half their class over a one lap stint – tomorrows race could still be very interesting for them.
Then in LMGT3, it was a role reversal for the two AMR Vantage LMGT3 teams as the #10 Racing Spirit of Leman car of Derek DeBoer finally made good on his earlier ambition to getting through to both stages of qualifying as the American dug deep within his final qualifying lap to produce a lap time of 2:19:736 to take his car into Hyperpole for the first time with a P8 finish.
The #27 Heart of Racing AMR of Ian James had been looking comfortable within his new for Spa Vantage LMGT3 after his previous car was written off in that Imola crash last time out as he then handed the car over to their silver grade driver Zacharie Robichon.
Taking charge of the #10 car for Hyperpole was Eduardo Barichello who too left matters to the last minute before posting his fastest lap to go second, just a quarter of a second off the pole position pace from the #78 Lexus. That final lap trumped the efforts of the #27 as Zacharie had to make do with a P6 starting position tomorrow.
Valentin Hasse-Clot and Mattia Drudi complete the two Vantage LMGT3 crews for Racing Spirit of Leman and Heart of Racing respectively.
The weather for race day appears like that of the last two days with the possibility of it being slightly warmer again which will certainly help those initial laps of cold new tyres. This time around, the start of the six-hour race will not be until 14:00hrs local, making for something of a late finish on site – but it’s Spa, and who cares about that!!