Le Mans Series

1000 KM Spa – Hours 4-5-6

© Planetlemans – Gerlach Delissen

The second part of the race started with several stop and go penalties for cars not respecting the track limits. The number 78 was given a three-minute penalty after making the same mistake more than one time.

Rebellion Racing’s day started to get worse 2 hours and 18 minutes into the race when the number 12 Lola slowed down coming out of La Source. It stopped on the side of the track and was pushed back to safety by the marshalls. An overheating gearbox was cited as the cause of the retirement.

Nick Leventis made contact with the barrier in his Strakka Racing HPD ARX-01c, damaging the exact same bodywork parts he wrecked in the warm up session. With the team running out of spare parts they were forced to retire.

The next car to hit trouble was one of the newest Le Mans invitees. KSM’s Lola stopped at the track and was also pushed to safety by marshals. The German team was unable to get the car back on track and started packing early on.

Four hours after the start Team Peugeot Total was leading the 1000 KM of Spa with their number 3 car (Lamy/Bourdais/Pagenaud), 47 seconds ahead of the Audi of Capello/Kristensen/McNish and a minute and a half from teammates Gene/Wurz/Davidson.

In the following hour the number 1 Peugeot fought its way back to the Audi and eventually passed it to make it a Peugeot 1-2. The 008 Lola Aston Martin of Signature Plus ended up in the gravel trap, but after being pulled out of there it soon returned.
OAK Racing’s number 24, which had been third after four hours, slowed down and dropped down the order ten minutes before the end of the fifth hour.

The safety car came out again when Christoffer Nygaard slammed his Young Driver AMR Aston Martin DBR9 into the wall at Blanchimont. Nygaard spun off the track and hit the barrier with the front of his car, ripping off the front section.

40 minutes before the end of the race the green flag was shown and the cars set off for the final part of the race. Ten minutes later though it started to rain again and several teams had problems keeping their car on the track. The number 1 Peugeot went into the tyres at Rivage.

With twenty minutes left the battle for second place in GT2 heated up, with Fisichella and Melo just a tenth of a second from each other. Melo looked multiple times, before making the pass on his teammate and moving into second place.

In the final minutes of the race the Peugeot team had something to cheer when the number 2 car passed the number 7 Audi coming out of the Bus Stop. As a result Peugeot was back in first and second. Rebellion Racing’s day ended really bad when their second car came to a halt just coming onto the finish straight.

For Peugeot this didn’t matter though as after six hours of racing, 139 laps, the 3 car finished the race in first place, over a minute ahead of the number 2 car and almost a minute and a half over the Audi number 7.