Stage is now set of the anniversary running of the Spa 24 tomorrow
Having been blessed with fantastic weather around the Ardennes circuit throughout the track sessions so far, the real business began yesterday evening with the first of four Qualifying sessions that would be used to determine each cars starting position except for the top twenty who would move onto the later Superpole session on Friday.
Bolstered by Aston Martin Racing’s biggest Partner team participation in recent years saw all seven 2024 Vantage GT3’s take part, starting either within Q1 or Q2 depending upon the number of drivers aboard each car giving us a representation in all classes.
Starting from the rear of the grid, the #36 Walkenhorst Motorsport Bronze Cup entry of Tim Creswick/Bijoy Garg/Mex Jenson and Ben Green had the slowest time of the seven with a combined time worthy of a P58 grid slot. Slightly further up was the #11 Comtoyou Racing Bronze Cup entry of Kobe Pauwels/John De Wilde/ Dante Rappange and Job Van Uitert who claimed a P54 slot.
In P51, was the #12 Comtoyou Racing Silver Cup AMR entry for Nicolas Baert/Sebastian Ogaard/Esteban Muth and Erwan Bastard with their sister #21 Silver Cup entry of Charles Clark/Matisse Lismont/ Xavier Maassen and Sam Dejonghe further ahead again in P40.
The #35 Silver Cup Walkenhorst entry of Romain Leroux/Lorcan Hanafin and Maxime Robin will start from P38 to complete the Aston Martin Racing powered entry outside of the top twenty runners.
To earn that accolade, both the #34 Walkenhorst Pro Class entry of Ross Gunn/Henrique Chaves and David Pittard and the #7 Comtoyou Racing Pro entry of Nicki Thiim/Marco Sorenson and Mattia Drudi finished within the top ten in P10 and P5 respectively to go again on Friday.
This time running within the full heat of the day, the #34 Walkenhorst driven by Chaves and the #7 Comtoyou Racing AMR of Drudi both clocked best lap times worthy of a top ten place before eventually dropping down to P12 for the #34 and P13 for the #7 car at the end after timing corrections were made to the final order.
The next biggest test for all runners will be to make it safely around turn one at La Source for the first time on Saturday afternoon before continuing to do so for the next twenty-four hours. Anything can happen – and usually does and that doesn't even include what Mother Nature can add into the mix!!
Photo credits – Series / Team / social media
Friday, June 28, 2024 |
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Six AMR's doing well in Spa 24 Qualifying
After the fun and frivolity of yesterdays cruise down to Spa Francorchamps town for the events now customary meet and greet session between the teams, drivers and race fans it was back to business today with the start of the events formal qualifying process.
Having had was something of a bruising start for the #97 Oman Racing with TF Sport Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT3 earlier today in Free Practice , the Qualifying sessions have just been completed this evening to determine three quarters of the positions for the start of Saturdays race and that has seen all six cars form the AMR stable in good position in their respective classes.
With Qualifying again being staged over one Qualifying session per driver per car, all three Pro class cars have made it through to tomorrows Super Pole shoot out with the remaining three cars all being in the top four in the Pro-Am, Silver Cup and Am classes out of the remaining 72 entries.
Q1 and Q2 were both red flagged interrupted by incident involving other cars on track - all fortunately not injuring significant damage to their vehicles but enough to delay the proceedings by nearly half an hour by the time Q4 had finished.
With Spa also experiencing very high track and air temperatures this week, thunderstorms are being predicted for some stage of the event with possible rain even arriving during the night practice that is now taking place.
Salih Yoluc unfortunately had an 'off' in the #97 car which caused sizeable front end damage to the car that appears to be running absolutely fine at the moment after Charlie Eastwood and Nicki Thiim both posted times to raise the cars position up to P4 in Pro-Am.
Ross Gunn is clearly looking forward to his 2019 excursion into the event, this time in the #188 Am Class Garage 59 car as he posted the second quickest time in the class to elevate that car also up to P4 in class.
The Silver Cup entered #762 R-Motorsport car of Ricky Collard, Hugo de Sadeleer, Aaro Vainio and Ferdinand Habsburg completed their Qualifying process to finish P30 overall and P3 in class.
That leaves the Pro entered #59 Garage 59 car of Jonny Adam, Andrew Watson and Come Ledogar and both #62 and #76 R-Motorsport cars of Maxime Martin, Matt Parry and Matthieu Vaxivierre with Marvin Kirchhofer, Jake Dennis and Alex Lynn to tough it out in tomorrows Superpole to determine the position of the top twenty starters.
Is this the year for Aston Martin Racing?
Photo credits - R-Motorsport / TF Sport
Thursday, July 25, 2019 |
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