SPA 24 HOURS RACE CENTRE1 AUGUST 2019 AUTOSPORT.COM 35#4 Black Falcon Mercedes led
in the wet, but couldn’t match
Porsche in the mixed conditionsSoucek, Derani and Ordonez were
best-placed of four-strong Bentley
contingent in a lowly 29th overallSR
recover and ended up still a lap down O
in 10th place at the chequered flag.
The factory Audi R8 LMS fielded by
2017 Spa winners Sainteloc Racing for
Christopher Haase, Markus Winkelhock and
Frederic Vervisch ended up fourth. It might
have been higher but for an incident at the
first safety car after racing got going again.
Rene Rast was leading in the best of the
WRT Audi R8 LMS GT3s, but the safety
car picked up the wrong car. The Sainteloc
entry was the big loser in this snafu, though
Haase conceded that it would still have been
tough to beat the Porsches in the conditions
that prevailed at the end of the race.
“Let’s say the safety car thing didn’t help,”
he said. “Track position is key in these
races, so maybe if we’d been able to stay
near the front we would have had a chance.”
WRT was still in the fight with the
car Rast shared with fellow DTM drivers
Robin Frijns and Nico Muller on Sunday
afternoon. Rast was fourth at the
penultimate restart when Klaus Bachler in
the Dinamic Porsche moved over on him on
the entry to the Pouhon double left-hander.
The damage to both cars was enough to end
their respective races on the spot.
Ferrari might have won this one with
Bentley endured a disaster on its big
push for a Spa 24 Hours victory in its
centenary year. The British marque had
been a frontrunner over the previous
three editions of the race, which included
a near-miss in 2016, but this time it was
nowhere. All the M-Sport squad had to
show for its four-car factory effort was
a desultory 29th-place finish.
Maybe it was apposite for a British
marque that its chances were largely
undone by the weather, twice over.
None of the four Bentleys made it
through the first round of qualifying on
Thursday and into Friday’s superpole
session that set the first 10 rows of the
grid. A big factor was the weather, or the
failure of the organisers to react to it.
Turbocharged cars such as the
Bentley were effectively penalised by
the high-pressure zone that brought
near 40C temperatures to Spa for the
qualifying days. The organisers set a
baseline barometric pressure from
which the boost curve of the turbo cars
is taken and this reflected the inclement
weather forecast for the race. The turbos
lost out – by as much as 10bhp – to the
normally aspirated cars.
The change in the weather was also
to the detriment of Bentley’s chances.The Continental struggled on a damp
track, its competitiveness not helped
by an 10kg increase in minimum weight
under the Balance of Performance after
its Paul Ricard 1000km victory in June.
At the same time, Mercedes and Audi
received 10kg breaks in their favour.
Andy Soucek, who shared the only
M-Sport car to finish with Pipo Derani
and Lucas Ordonez, reckoned their
lowly finishing position was entirely
down to the weight.
“We didn’t make any real mistakes,
just a couple of quick spins,” he said.
“We were good in the pits and didn’t lose
any time on strategy. We were just slow.”
“We’re the heaviest car out there
and when the car starts to slide it keeps
sliding,” explained M-Sport race director
Matt Wilson. “We’re OK in the dry and the
full wet, but the weight has the biggest
affect in greasy conditions. It’s like
carrying an extra spare tyre in rallying.”
The Continental shared by Steven
Kane, Jules Gounon and Jordan Pepper
made the biggest impact and was on
the fringes of the top 10 when it made
an early technical pitstop. It never
made up the lost ground and was
retired late in the race due to an
issue with the front subframe.BENTLEY CENTENARY TURNS SOUR