Le Mans Series

Good Le Mans dress rehearsal for Spyker Squadron

© Planetlemans – Gerlach Delissen

Spyker Squadron experienced a chaotic Le Mans dress rehearsal during the 1000 KM of Spa-Francorchamps. Having started from twelfth place Tom Coronel and Peter Dumbreck finished the race in a decent seventh place in the GT2 class.

The race on the Belgian circuit was a rather bizarre one. Light rain during the opening laps caused a lot of trouble for several teams, but things got more bizarre just after a pit stop when a power outage forced the race director to stop the race until the timing systems were back online. Unfortunately for Spyker Squadron a communication error from the pit marshals meant that the C8 Laviolette GT2R was among a group of cars stopped at the end of the pit exit rather than being allowed to join the rest of the field on the finish straight. As a result Spyker Squadron lost one lap.

After the race was restarted Coronel and Dumbreck managed to work their way up in the GT2 rankings and eventually made it to seventh place. Dumbreck then started to safe fuel as the gap to the sixth placed car was too big and the team decided to bring home the car in seventh place.

Despite the chaos in Belgium Spyker Squadron completed the race without any problems and the team will now prepare for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This weekend showed that the car is ready for it as it had a trouble-free run once again.

Peter Dumbreck: “I am happy with the end result. We had a lot of bad luck through the race and we finally got a bit of good luck at the end. I am happy with seventh place, it could have been fifth. But then again, it could have been twelfth, had we had a little bit more bad luck. It was a good test for the car, it was very reliable, nothing went wrong with the car at all. The only things that went wrong were our luck and the fact that I had all four wheels over the curb at Eau Rouge and was penalized for it, along with ten others. But that’s the rules and maybe I should have kept the car a bit more on the track, but I was pushing to 100%. To me this is the test for Le Mans, this is what it is all about and I think in Le Mans we can step back a bit and just try and drive a consistent race and let it come to us.”

Tom Coronel: “I think we’ve done reasonably well. I’m very satisfied, especially because this is the preparation you want for Le Mans. No problems, a flexible team and a car that doesn’t squeak and creak or has any weaknesses. Quite simply: Yes, we are perhaps just short of the absolute top, but the competition is really strong. P7 behind the big boys isn’t that bad. We are ready for Le Mans!”

Peter van Erp, Managing Director: “Looking at the mechanical parts of the car we had a good race and had no problems at all. The engine and the gearbox ran really well. It has been a good test for Le Mans and everything looks good. It is a big boost and gives us confidence for Le Mans. The race was messy though. We started in the rain and were behind the safety car soon after the start. After one of our regular stops we got a code read. At the restart we were wrongly stopped on the pit lane exit and lost a lap. The stewards of the meeting could not help us. They confirmed it was a pit marshal’s mistake, but there were no legal ways to do something against it. So, bad luck due to the mistake of a pit marshal. Given the circumstances I am not unhappy with the result, a good dress rehearsal for Le Mans.”