As the team packed up the transporter for the wonderful Spa Francorchomps circuit for the 6 hour classic race there was considerable excitement as always to take the GT40 to this wonderful circuit positioned as its in the the very picturesque Ardennes countryside. Driving this circuit really makes you appreciate what past legends achieved on the original even faster circuit. I love watching the short film by Martin Brundle, which gives an amazing insight to what this circuit is was like to drive especially the famous “Marta Kink “ which you can watch here after a short advert on this link.
https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/10551327/watch-martin-brundle-tours-the-old-spa-track
The race weekend started with qualifying in the dark which is a bit of a shock to the system when we are nearly always race in day light the rest of the season. Qualifying was a struggle as we never really got a gap in the traffic to demonstrate the cars outright pace. However everything felt great in the car and starting 12th ( out of 105 starters ) still put us towards the front.
I started the race which although it’s 6 hours long you are still driving almost flat out if you want to win this prestigious event. I had a great run and managed to haul us up to 4th place when I handed over to John Young for the next 2 hours. John also had a great stint chipping away he got the car to 3rd overall before handing over to Andy Newell for the final stint.
Obviously once you get to the front of any grid it gets much harder to gain positions! Andy did manage to get us to 1st position which was a terrific result but just before the end of the race a safety car was deployed and on the restart we got pipped to the post to finish 2nd by only a couple of seconds! All in all a great result though and through the entire event SZ Motorsport ( our team ) had showed great team spirit and professionalism. A wonderful day at a truly epic circuit.