WEC - The 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps

[teamzr1]

So, will you guys get off your butts this weekend and go cheer and support the C8.R this weekend ?

Well the C8.R Corvette has not (yet) had a BoP pushed on them for this weekend's WEC race

A 37-car entry list has been finalized for the FIA WEC’s 6 Hours of Spa this Saturday, including a number of changes since the season-opener at Sebring back in March.
The most notable addition is, as planned, the return of the No. 86 GR Racing Porsche, which missed Sebring due to the team’s owner Mike Wainwright having business commitments linked to the Ukraine crisis.
The GR Porsche did appear at Sebring, though it was used as a late replacement for the damaged Team Project 1 entry. At Spa, Wainwright will be joined by Riccardo Pera and long-serving team member Ben Barker.

In the headline Hypercar class there is one major change, as Brazilian IMSA regular Pipo Derani replaces Ryan Briscoe at Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus in the No. 708 SCG 007 LMH. Once again Glickenhaus is entering a single 007, though the team still plans to compete at Le Mans next month with two cars.

Another Hypercar category absentee is Peugeot Sport, which continues to develop its 9X8 away from the public eye.
The French manufacturer has been out testing recently at Barcelona and Magny Cours, but has still not announced a date for the car’s competitive debut. RACER has previously been told by a team source that a post-Le Mans debut at Monza is likely.

Meanwhile, Alex Lynn (No. 23 United Autosports) and Sebastien Bourdais (No. 10 Vector Sport) start their WEC campaigns late after missing Sebring due to clashing IMSA commitments. Alex Brundle will also make his 2022 debut at Spa with Inter Europol after missing Sebring following a positive test for COVID-19.

In LMP2, the No. 44 ARC Bratislava squad will run 22-year-old Dutch star Bent Viscaal in place of Sebring starter Mathias Beche.
The addition of Viscaal comes off the heels of his sportscar racing debut in the European Le Mans Series race at Paul Ricard, when he clinched second place alongside Sophia Floersch in an Algarve Pro Racing Oreca.

TF Sport, meanwhile, brings a revised line-up will stay in pace for the remainder of the 2022 campaign.
Henrique Chaves will do double-duty for the team in both the WEC and ELMS and join Ben Keating and Marco Sorensen in the No. 33 GTE AM class Aston Martin. He replaces Florian Latorre, who raced at Sebring, where the team scored a second place.

The Balance of Performance changes have also been revealed by the organizers ahead of the event
The most notable tweak comes in the Hypercar category, where the Alpine A480 Gibson which won Sebring rather comfortably receives a 20 kW power reduction. This is the only change in the Hypercar class for Round 2, and will serve to close the gap that was apparent between Alpine, Toyota’s GR010s and the Glickenhaus. The reduction amounts to around 27 horsepower.

In GTE, the only change comes in the form of a two-liter reduction in fuel capacity for the Porsche 911 RSR 19s in both the Pro and Am classes.
Elsewhere, 15kg of success ballast has been applied to the Northwest AMR Aston Martin that won GTE Am at Sebring. The No. 33 TF Sport and No. 56 Team Project 1 entries have also received 10 and 5kg of ballast respectively.

The 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps is set to begin on Saturday at 13:00 local time, following qualifying at 18:20 on Friday.

 

[teamzr1]

Corvette C8.R begins the European leg of its 2022 global tour this weekend with the Six Hours of Spa and the second round of the FIA World Endurance Championship. It’s the second straight year that the program will compete at the fast and historic circuit in the Ardennes region of Belgium, and a final tune-up ahead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Tommy Milner and Nick Tandy will again pilot the No. 64 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R at Spa in the GTE Pro category. The pairing are coming off a satisfying runner-up finish at a storm-shortened 1,000 Miles of Sebring in March – the first race for Corvette as a full-season WEC team.

While not as familiar to Corvette Racing as Sebring, the team does have some Spa experience to lean on. Antonio Garcia and Oliver Gavin teamed in the Six Hours a year ago to give the team and the WEC technical group a better understanding of the mid-engine Corvette’s capabilities ahead of its 2021 Le Mans debut.
Armed with that data and the mileage gained from Sebring, Corvette Racing is hoping for a solid performance that will go a long way toward its preparation for a potential ninth class win at Le Mans.

Tandy is extremely familiar with Spa. He has logged two previous starts in the WEC at the 4.35-mile, 20-turn circuit that has played host to every major automobile series since it began hosting Grand Prix races in 1925.
Tandy is also a past winner of the Spa 24 Hours.

That insight will be valuable to the rest of the team and seatmate Milner, who will race at Spa for the first time. Despite never having set foot on the grounds, Milner has logged hours upon hours of laps around the circuit on his personal simulator, as well as Chevrolet’s Driver in the Loop sim.

The Six Hours of Spa for the FIA World Endurance Championship is scheduled for 7 a.m. ET/1 p.m. CET on Saturday, May 7 from the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. Qualifying is set for 2:20 p.m. ET/6:20 p.m. CET on Friday, May 6.
The race will air live on MotorTrend with live-streaming coverage of the race and qualifying on the MotorTrend app.
Radio Le Mans will broadcast the race, qualifying and all practice sessions.

TOMMY MILNER, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“It’s my first time at Spa. This race will be the first time it really feels like a new championship for me and the team. I’ve driven Spa for thousands of laps on a simulator, and I’ve been doing more on our Driver in the Loop with the team and engineers.
I’ll be ready to go, but driving a new track is always something new and unique. As we saw at Sebring, the competition is very, very tough.

I’ll be a little bit on the back foot compared to some of these guys who have driven these tracks already in their careers. With the help of the simulator at Chevrolet and my sim at home, I’m excited about getting that experience of learning the track. It’s a great challenge to drive a track like Spa and I’m ready for it.”

Spa Special: “For Spa, Eau Rouge and Raidillon are the obvious highlight sections of Spa much like at Laguna Seca, the Corkscrew is the highlight of that track. But the whole track itself is what’s exciting at Spa. There is a lot more than just that sequence of corners to start the lap.
I’m certainly excited for that. For me most of all, I’m excited to take on the challenge of learning a new racetrack.”

NICK TANDY, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“Spa is one of the legendary circuits of the world. Driving this car around there is something I’m really looking forward to.
It’s superfast. We have the experience from last year’s race and some data we can take forward into this year.
If the car behavior is anything like it was at Sebring, it will be a dream to drive around Spa. We hope we can make it a tiny bit faster.”

Spa Special:
“My favorite part of Spa I’d say is the Fagnes Chicane (turns 12 and 13).
It’s a sequence where if you hook it up well and use the curbs perfectly, you get rewarded with lap time. Maybe more important for lap time is Les Combes a section with heavy braking and a three-corner combination.
If you get one part wrong, it can lead to a whole world of errors.”

 

[teamzr1]

WEC Schedule this weekend's race

 

[Stingray]

Spa. On the one hand a truly great circuit and on the other a pita.

Access and parking on a big race weekend will steal many hours of your life. If you drive the circuit its tricky to learn - very long and with so many corners. That hairpin straight after the start line is completely ridiculous. But leaving all that aside, one of the greats.

Indycar from Barber Motorsports (Birmingham AL) last weekend was superb. Looking forward to Nascar at Darlington on Sunday. Throwback weekend with lots of classic paint schemes. So far this season 9 winners from 11 races.

 

[teamzr1]

Congrats to Chase E on last week's race,
Glad to see Toyada sucking along with the Fords
Rick H's teams doing well with this new Gen design

Looks like that Spa F track does have 1 long straight

 

[Oneball]

Congrats to Chase E on last week's race,
Glad to see Toyada sucking along with the Fords
Rick H's teams doing well with this new Gen design

Looks like that Spa F track does have 1 long straight

View attachment 16710

Congrats to Chase E on last week's race,
Glad to see Toyada sucking along with the Fords
Rick H's teams doing well with this new Gen design

Looks like that Spa F track does have 1 long straight

View attachment 16710

That’s the old circuit they’ve not used it since the 1970s

 

[Stingray]

Yes, that's the way Spa used to look and it's deceptive, with an elevation change of some 300ft and the daunting Eau Rouge dip/kink. As well known as The Corkscrew at Laguna Seca. Spa has a long history and is worth a few clicks on the Internet. Current layout is around 4.5 miles and 19 turns. Like Le Mans, turns have been added to suppress max speeds.

 

[teamzr1]

1st practice results

C8.R Corvette Racing ended the session in last place, with a best lap set by Tommy Milner,
although the American squad’s time was slower than the fastest runner in GTE-Am.

 

[teamzr1]

That’s the old circuit they’ve not used it since the 1970s

OK how about this ?

 

[Oneball]

Yep that’s it. Kind of. It looks a bit funny especially Radillion.

 

[Oneball]

 

[teamzr1]

Gianmaria Bruni stole the show in GTE Pro, the Italian snatching class pole at the last moment from his teammate Michael Christensen in the sister Porsche.
The Italian’s best time was a 2m14.301s, almost two tenths up on the rest of the field in the No. 91 911 RSR 19.
“It was perfect one lap is enough in qualifying, and he made it exciting doing it on his last lap,” said Bruni’s co-driver in the No. 91, Richard Lietz.
Before Bruni’s final flyer, Christensen had looked set to take pole, but the Dane missed out despite improving his best time late in the session.

Corvette Racing’s C8.R will start third in the class tomorrow after a strong performance from Nick Tandy to get within 0.3s of the pole time.

AF Corse, meanwhile, heads into Saturday with its drivers scratching their heads after ending up 0.8s and 1.1s off the pace respectively.
The Italian Ferrari outfit’s fortunes, at least to this point, don’t appear to have changed after an underwhelming weekend at Sebring.

 

[teamzr1]

Nick Tandy qualified Corvette C8.R Racing’s No. 64 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R third on the GTE Pro grid Friday ahead of the Six Hours of Spa, the team’s second race in this year’s FIA World Endurance Championship.

Tandy set a time of 2:16.606 (116.383 mph) in the Mobil 1/SiriusXM Corvette. It put him three-tenths of a second off Gianmaria Bruni’s GTE Pro pole-winning time and has Corvette Racing in a strong position to challenge again for a victory Saturday in its first full season in the WEC.

This is the second straight appearance for the mid-engine C8.R at Spa, but the gap in qualifying shows how quickly the team has gotten back up to speed at a still-unfamiliar location. The Corvette Racing engineering team and crew spent much of Thursday and Friday running through a number mechanical and aero adjustments to get the C8.R into a good configuration for Saturday’s race.

This is Milner’s first career appearance at Spa while Tandy is a former winner at the circuit and has two previous WEC starts to his credit at the 4.35-mile, 19-turn circuit. Both drivers were satisfied with the feel and balance of the Corvette after Friday’s sessions, with optimism present within the team heading into Saturday. They are looking to equal or improve on a runner-up finish from Sebring in the season opener.

The Six Hours of Spa for the FIA World Endurance Championship is scheduled for 7 a.m. ET/1 p.m. CET on Saturday, May 7 from the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. The race will air live on MotorTrend TV with live-streaming coverage of the race on the Motor Trend On-Demand app. TV and streaming coverage will begin at 6:30 a.m. ET, as does Radio Le Mans’ live audio broadcast.

NICK TANDY, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R QUALIFIED THIRD IN GTE PRO:

“Overall, I’m really pleased with the second day here, not just the qualifying, but also the two free practice sessions. We obviously came here without the vast knowledge that our competitors have in their toolboxes.
So we’ve been making steps every session. To be this close to pole position and the front row in qualifying is very pleasing. It seems a bit like a Sebring situation where we don’t have the outright, single-lap pace of the Porsche but a six-hour race isn’t won in qualifying.
We’ve been working hard in practices to make the car good over the two-hour stints and not one lap. Hopefully that will pay off tomorrow.”

Saturday outlook:
“The weather for tomorrow looks like it could be changeable. The best-laid plans may be thrown out, but we need to take each lap and each hour as it comes in order to react to the situations as they present themselves in the best way we can.
As a team, Corvette Racing knows how to do that as well as anyone, so we’re confident we can put up a fight for the win.”

TOMMY MILNER, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R:

“It was very good this morning. It was great for me with the laps from yesterday now coming in this morning.
Not that I feel that I already have all the experience that I need here, but I felt very comfortable in the Corvette. I’m very happy with the pace overall.
For me, obviously, this is a bit of an unknown.
Every time you come somewhere new, you wonder if you are going to be on the pace, but I’m quite happy with the progress so far.

“This morning it was all about getting the car a bit better and Kyle (Millay, chief engineer) has done an awesome job with the setup changes and the ideas overnight to help improve the car.
By the end of the session, the car was the best it has been all weekend.
We stayed on old tires the whole session, when everybody else changed tires at some point. So in that respect we’re super happy.”

 

[teamzr1]

Race began 1 hour ago at time of this post, 5 hours to go
C8.R leading right now
View live timing at

WEC Live Timing

 

[teamzr1]

With just one hour into the 6-hour race, Corvette C8.R Racing was dealt a significant setback when the pits closed while its GTE-Pro car was undergoing an emergency service under safety car conditions.

After 24 minutes on pit road, Nick Tandy resumed, three laps down from the Pro-class lead battle.

 

[teamzr1]

The 6 Hours of Spa was placed under red flag conditions for a third time shortly after the halfway stage of a chaotic FIA World Endurance Championship race.
LMP2 driver Robin Frijns held the overall lead in the No. 31 Team WRT Oreca 07 Gibson, ahead of Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Kamui Kobayashi and Glickenhaus Racing’s Pipo Derani.

The third red flag came out after three hours and 20 minutes to facilitate barrier repairs following an accident for Inter Europol Competition LMP2 driver Alex Brundle at the exit of Turn 9.

Brundle climbed out of the No. 34 Oreca unaided after sliding off in wet conditions, at a point of the circuit where a handful of cars have gone off during the afternoon.
Frijns cycled to the outright lead during the second stoppage, ahead of the No. 36 Alpine A480 Gibson driven by Andre Negrao and the No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid with Mike Conway at the helm.

Conway wasted little time in getting past Negrao at La Source, but was unable to close the margin to Frijns who built a lead of around 14 seconds in the lower-category prototype.
Conway, Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez are Toyota’s remaining hope in round two of the FIA World Endurance Championship after their teammates in the No. 8 entry retired with a car issue.

That occurred during a safety car that succeeded the first red flag, which came out shortly after the one-hour mark when LMP2 driver Miro Konopka crashed on the approach to Campus.

The race was put behind a safety car in anticipation of a restart, but intensifying rainfall prompted race control to bring the red flags back out just before two hours.
Racing properly resumed with two and a half hours completed, but several drivers had off-track moments in the tricky conditions.
They included Team Penske’s Dane Cameron, whose Oreca went off twice at Bruxelles and at the exit of Turn 9, while Richard Mille Racing’s Sebastien Ogier and JOTA’s Antonio Felix da Costa also found the gravel.

There was also a change to the GTE-Am lead when No. 54 AF Corse driver Francesco Castellacci looped around on his own coming out of Turn 9, enabling Team Project 1 Porsche driver Matteo Cairoli to sail through.

The No. 52 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo gained a huge lead during the red flag by opting not to pit while its rivals came in.
Miguel Molina enjoyed a one-lap advantage at halfway, ahead of Michael Christensen in the No. 92 Porsche 911 RSR-19 and Alessandro Pier Guidi in the No. 51 Ferrari.

One driver to gain ground during the half-hour spell of green flag running leading up to halfway was Alex Lynn, who progressed from seventh to fifth overall with overtakes on his United Autosports teammate Filipe Albuquerque and Prema’s Robert Kubica.

Lynn ranked behind Glickenhaus driver Derani, Alpine’s Negrao and the second-placed Toyota of Conway heading into the halfway mark, when a Full Course Yellow period occurred due to Matthieu Lahaye beaching his Ultimate Oreca at Fagnes.

The 6 Hours of Spa is the second consecutive race to be affected by three red flags, after the 1000 Miles of Sebring season-opener in March.

 

[teamzr1]

C8.R never could recover from the 3 laps in the pits

 

[teamzr1]

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium – Misfortune and Mother Nature worked against C8.R Corvette Racing on Saturday as an early-race advantage turned into a fourth-place class finish for the No. 64 Mobil 1/SiriusXM Chevrolet Corvette C8.R at the Six Hours of Spa.

Tommy Milner & Nick Tandy finished 1 lap down in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s GTE Pro class, but had hopes for much more early on. Nevertheless, the team will take all the information it gained from this weekend into its next event – the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Saturday’s race was a disjointed one, to say the least, with a mix of 11 full-course yellow or safety-car periods, plus three red-flag stoppages. All totaled, there were less than three hours of green-flag time in the race.

Tandy started third in class and was in a position to gain track position and potentially the lead by going a lap longer than the rest of the GTE Pro field before his first stop for fuel and tires.
An untimely safety-car period for a heavy prototype crash and a subsequent red flag closed the pit entry and exit just before the Corvette could make it into pitlane, which meant Tandy had to stop for a five-second emergency service for fuel.

Not only did that cost Corvette Racing a shot at the lead, it also meant a loss of more than a lap of track position.
Due to the sporting regulations, Tandy wasn’t allowed to leave the pitlane until the field made a full lap past the pit exit after race officials lifted the red flag.
Heavy rain showers arrived at the track during the stoppage as the GTE Pro field went to grooved wet-weather tires.

More rain halted the race twice more as Tandy stayed in the Corvette past the halfway point. He swapped over to Milner a little after three hours running but with the No. 64 C8.R back on the lead lap. More rain fell on the circuit to cause another red flag with about two hours and 40 minutes left.
As the track began to dry during the next hour, Milner began to lose performance as the fully grooved rain tires grew hot and lost grip.

He stopped with an hour and 45 minutes left for a driver change and newer rain tires for Tandy, who eventually went on slick tires 30 minutes later under another full-course yellow, with Milner closing for the final hour.

The next event for Corvette Racing is the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 11-12 with two Corvette C8.Rs set to compete in GTE Pro.

TOMMY MILNER, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R FOURTH IN GTE PRO:

“It’s a little unfortunate for us.
The pace of the car, as we saw in qualifying and practice, was pretty good. We basically got punished for stretching our fuel on the first stint, just unlucky in reality. I don’t think we really ever got back from that situation.
It’s nothing that anyone else did or that we did. It’s just the way the rules are. But it was fun. I really enjoyed my laps around Spa.
The Corvette was very good. The race conditions were very difficult, but we had fun.”

NICK TANDY, NO. 64 MOBIL 1/SiriusXM CHEVROLET CORVETTE C8.R FOURTH IN GTE PRO:

“It was an interesting race.
We started well and made our way to second position. We were trying to stretch the fuel out a bit to give us some options on strategy.
In the end, it hurt us with a safety car and red flag.
Obviously, we were out of fuel, so we had to pit.

The rules state that if you pit under red, you have to wait 1 lap, which put us behind.
Through good work, strategy and taking a risk on tires, we made that lap back and got on the back of things.
But we were always that step behind from then on in.
We maximized what we could in the end. It's good practice to see all these scenarios work out ahead of Le Mans. It wasn’t our day today.
The luck didn’t fall our way, but we learned a lot and got decent points in the championship.”

 

[teamzr1]

Full 6 hours of race on video