FIA GT Championship

Spyker Squadron Dubai Qualifying report

© FIA GT / DPPI

For the third year in a row the FIA GT Championship traveled to the United Arab Emirates where 27 cars will start in this Saturday’s three-hour race, a race that will proof to be though due to the high air temperatures. The race will be held at the 5.394 km long Dubai Autodrome, opened two years ago.

Spyker Squadron entered two Spyker C8 Spyder GT2R’s – the number 79 driven by Jeroen Bleekemolen and Jonny Kane and the 80 with Peter Dumbreck and Peter Kox.
The weekend of the last FIA GT Championship race this season, and also the last race for Spyker Squadron this year, started really well for the Dutch manufacturer of hand-built super cars. Both C8 Spyder’s ranked high in today’s free practice sessions – in the first session Dumbreck and Bleekemolen respectively claimed the third and fourth position in class while in the second session Dumbreck and Bleekemolen claimed the second and fourth spot.

In the qualification session later this afternoon everything went great for Dutchman Bleekemolen. He set a great time and positioned his car in a third place, just behind the two leading Ferrari 430’s. Peter Dumbreck was not so fortunate as, in his quickest lap of the qualifying session so far, the car stopped due to an electric problem. The problem was quickly identified but, as the team decided to enter the track as late as possible to benefit from the dropping late afternoon air temperatures, there was no time left to fix Peter’s car and sent it back out again. Peter qualified the number 80 car in a sixth position, still ahead of all the Porsches.

Peter van Erp: “I am very happy with the results today. All cars that do not compete in all FIA GT races carry 20 kg ballast as a penalty. The Spyker Squadron however carries an additional 28 kg per car as we drive with two professional drivers in both cars. So even with 48 kg we have showed that we can be competitive in this strong field.”

He continues: “The improvements we have made to the cars clearly pay off. We are very pleased with the tires; both compounds work great and can be double-stinted. It is good to be driving with Michelin again. The high air temperatures can be challenging tomorrow; today we found that the coolant temperature were a bit too high with the pit-stops and so we have made some modifications to the car”.

Tomorrow’s race will start at 14:30 local time.