dbRacing - Spa Race Report May 17-19th 2002

Spa Race Report, May 17-19th 2002

Friday

After a 3 year absence the Porsche Classic returned to Spa Francochamps for its usual "Continental" round. Accompanying us on the trip as usual was the Porsche Cup cars, this year restricted to one model, the 996 GT3. Spa has an official grid capacity of 70 cars and so both the Cup and Classic cars share the same race.

Testing was arranged for Friday lunchtime with two timed qualifying sessions for the two races of the weekend. The Spa circuit is wonderful. Almost every type of corner exists on the long 4.4 mile circuit. The first corner is of course Eau Rouge, an absolute monster of a corner with a downhill run into it just in case your car does not accelerate fast enough ! You are convinced you have gone into it too quickly, then as the road bends and rises you feel sure you should be carrying more speed up the hill and then you crest the blind summit and realise you need absolute precision otherwise the gravel trap is sat there waiting to greet you. After a long run up the towards Malmedy you realise that the TV pictures just do not do justice to the circuit as they almost completely flatten the landscape. After a quick right/ left (remember Hakkinens move on Schumacher here a couple of years ago) there is a classic 180 degree bend with adverse camber, very reminiscent of Druids at Brands Hatch but better ! A little further round the lap there is Pouhon a great blind double apex left hander which is taken at an entry speed of about 80 mph and it is then simply a matter of getting the throttle on as early and hard as possible. Pouhon is a very important corner to lap times. Towards the end of the lap there is Blanchimont, a very fast kink which is taken almost flat but which has a long run up to it on the part of the circuit which was public roads until 2001. After Blanchimont there is the Bus Stop which is good because of the enormous care needed under braking from 130+ mph to about 30 mph. The end of the lap is the La-Source hairpin, again another fabulous corner because of the many different lines and outbraking possibilities that exist.

Many people say that the weather in the Ardennes is unpredictable. I disagree... upon personal experience I believe the weather can be easily predicted in one sentence:- "If it's not raining now it's going to be later". This was certainly true over the weekend. The first test session was organised for 12:30 and as the cars took to the track the temperature was well over 30 degrees. Having been to the circuit before I knew my way round and did not need to spend time simply getting laps in so I Could find my way back to the pits. It was a good job really as after about 5 laps (as long as many of our races in the UK) both the car and I were very hot and I decided not to stress the car in those temperatures but to take a 15 minute break to allow the car to cool down. This was not a good sign as both races were scheduled for 40 minutes and I was getting seriously worried that the car would not survive the weekend because of inevitable overheating and consequent head gasket failure. It was obvious that air temperature had a significant impact on the performance and water temperature of the car, but there was absolutely nothing I could do to remedy this other than hope for cooler days. I went out for the last 15 minutes of the session and improved my times, but significantly was not as quick as I had been in the RS a couple of years ago.

The qualifying session for the first race took place at 5:30 on the Friday evening. Qualifying was a pretty quiet event with no dramas apart from Tony Brown ending the session by losing the back end of his car on the exit of Pouhon and going into the barriers in an attempt to remove the rear end of his car. The GT3 cars were about 20 seconds a lap quicker then the Classics (on a 3 minute lap) but interestingly, despite running on slick tyres, the differential in cornering speeds was nothing like as great as I expected and in some cases the only real difference in lap times was down to straight line speed

My own performance was good enough for 8th place on the grid. A lap time of 3 minutes dead was quicker than that in the RS but still 5 or 6 seconds short of the top 3 times. I left to return to the hotel, thinking where more time could be gained and what impact the expected fall in temperatures and rain would have the following day.

Saturday

The predictions for the weather on Saturday had come true. It had rained in the early morning and our second practice session was going to be wet. A change of tyres was necessary meaning I was running on the smaller 15" rims with skinny 205 tyres. Although the session was 30 minutes, this would only give the opportunity to get 9 laps in meaning that it was important not to make a mistake and ruin one of the few, but very long laps. In light of the fact that we had a race just a couple of hours later I decided that ultimate qualifying position was not too important, but having the car in one piece for race number one was. Not everyone on the circuit had the same thought process and a number of competitors from the Cup contingent decided they were regnmeisters and went for it a little more than 100%............ A number of the Cup competitors were soon to be heading back to Blighty without even starting a race as they proceeded to cause maximum damage to their expensive machinery. I qualified in an uneventful 10th, a little disappointed but relaxed because of the 40 minute race length.

The track had dried considerably after our second practice session, but in true Ardennes style the rain returned as we were being called to the collecting area. I put the car onto full wet settings, but by the time it was time to go out onto the track the rain had halted and the track was beginning to dry. I knew I was on the wrong tyres but given the rather unpredictable nature of the timing of the races I could not risk returning to the paddock to change tyres.

After a single formation lap we organised ourselves into grid order (more or less) and rounded La Source hairpin for the run down to the green flag and Eau Rouge. The flag was waved and for possibly the first time this year I did not go backwards at the start. Eau Rouge had the makings of a classic first corner incident, but we were so unused to the rolling starts that the field was quite spread out and even though no-one could see the car or track in front of them for spray we all made it successfully up the hill. The first three or four laps were quite interesting as a gaggle of 8 or 9 of us chased one another in close formation, the lead cars always being in view. However as the track started to dry I came under pressure from Ian White who after about 4 feigned attempts at getting past finally made the move stick. Gradually the pack then eased away from me as I suffered from high speed instability and understeer as the track dried. With each lap I tried to push the car harder yet the lap times did not improve and I dropped further back. The race from this point onwards was completely without incident or challenge until I rounded the corner after Bruxelles and saw the car of Paul Tilleard at the side of the track. Three corners later Roger Farsons car was in the gravel trap with red flags waving. Now for those of you who are reading this report after the Brands Hatch report you will recall that the race there was red flagged when Roger rolled his car at Paddock Hill bend giving Paul Tilleard a 4th place finish in a situation where he had a flat tyre and would not have finished the race. This time Roger had gone off the circuit when Paul was leading the race, but had just broken down with a broken throttle linkage. There was much talk in the paddock about Ferrari team orders and questions were asked about exactly what financial inducement Paul had given to Roger to go off circuit and cause the race to be red flagged. For his part Tilleard admitted it was a very strange feeling to be towed into the pit lane and awarded the winners garland.

My own performance left me in 9th place but analysis of the lap times showed that my fastest lap was on lap 4 whilst everyone else's was lap 8 or 9, it being a drying track. A quick check over the car showed that my front wheels were towing out some 1 degree, which accounted for the high speed instability. The lack of rubber on the track and full wet settings had certainly not helped so the evening was spent getting the wheels pointing in the right direction and ready for the dry race forecast for the Sunday lunchtime

Sunday

First job of the day was to get a new front tyre fitted as the wheel alignment problem had scrubbed off a lot of rubber from the inside edge. I took the car for a test drive and all seemed fine and we went down to the collection area for the race. As I sat there in line Colin Broster noticed a small amount of water near the front of the car. At first I thought it was just some water from washing the car, but the blue colour meant it was something else. A quick check of the water header tank showed that the water level was down so rapid action was required. I nipped into one of the unoccupied pit garages and borrowed someone's washing up bowl, filled it with water and topped the header tank up. Whoevers pit garage it was, thankyou for the loan of your bowl, you don't know about it but you helped me to get a race. We tried to find the source of the leak, but nothing seemed obviously wrong and so no quick solution could be applied.

After the previous days "relaxed" rolling start we had been asked to keep in closer formation this time. Some of the slower class 2 cars commented that the speed of the pace car was almost full racing speed for them so we took to the grid for a slow formation lap. I found this really frustrating, as all I could think of was the drip drip of coolant escaping from some unknown hole in the system. I needed to get to the startline to at least get my starting points. Again we rounded La Source and accelerated towards the start line. The green flag was waved and we launched ourselves towards Eau Rouge. Once more along the long uphill straight I tried to make a move past Mike Clapham but just lacked the momentum to be sure of the move and the next lap was spent with Colin Broster close behind me as I tried to pass Mike. Almost one lap later I got a better run up Eau Rouge and passed Mike into the braking area and then set about overtaking Ian White. Colin Broster soon passed Clapham and made it a 3 way battle with Patrick Pearce just in front. On the fourth lap White started to pull away from me and Broster got closer, eventually passing me. We chased round for another lap and I lined myself up for a run to get past him on the run out of Eau rouge. Unfortunately one of the cars in front of us had spun, causing Colin to move off line which caused me to have to brake and go off line resulting in me getting the final exit completely wrong and going along, two wheels in the kitty litter, two wheels on the track at something like 90 mph. I managed to keep it all together but lost something like 6 seconds in the process. From that point forward the tyres seemed to go off, I was having 4 wheel slides in most of the corners, the handling was deteriorating with each lap and worse still the engine was losing power. From that point on I decided to drive conservatively, short shifting simply to get the car home and score points. I succeeded in this, losing no more places and maintaining 9th. I had quite high hopes for this weekend, but the thing that was demonstrated most convincingly was that the cars still does not adapt to increased temperatures very well, and being a turbo car is more affected by heat than the 911's