FULL RACE | 2022 TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa | FIA WEC

new would you look at that spa frankish on the jewel of the belgian ardennes on a beautiful early summer afternoon what a place to come racing and look at the fans that have come to watch the action hello everybody welcome to our coverage of the total energy six hours of spa fraukesha under the auspices of the fia world endurance championship you saw the president of the aco there pierre governing body of this sport roger penske one of the all-time motorsporting legends shaking hands with sebastian borday man he knows so very well from both of their exploits on the other side of the atlantic both are here racing this weekend and we have so much action in store i'm sure on what is a revised and ever more challenging spa franca shop round two of the 2022 fia world endurance championship that kicked off at sebring in florida in mid-march here we are in early may and it is the traditional shakedown for the le mans 24 hours wing foot is overhead the goodyear blimp has returned to europe after its autumn and winter in north america and will be with us throughout the season as will most uh if not all of these cars on the grid and more to come more to come at le mans more to come later in the championship as well well hello everybody my name is martin haven with me in the booth is graham goodwin down on the grid there a man who was at the nordschleife yesterday not a long haul over the mountains from here to there jim click and house who is overseeing the race here for his cars which start for the first time ever on pole graham and that's a nice little stat with which to start it is the first ever american pole sitting car in the fy dwc's decade long history uh a huge crowd here to see it today start from pole position uh the brand new stand up at radio uh pretty well filled and the start line grandstand just opposite our commentary booth uh equally well filled i'd say 1995 full and with people still everywhere car parts you can see are pretty much packed as well there's a 20 25 minute queue to get in i'm delighted that there was yes um it feels reborn i'll be honest with you it's great to see people back uh trackside it is an utter delight uh to have families um that's last is everybody back and enjoying the sunshine here for the moment at spa it may not stay that way there with frederick as uh the goodyear blimp uh flies overhead patch grid as well uh it's gonna be very interesting martin to see how the new challenges of this circuit uh start to impact at the start of this race as we get deeper and deeper into the six hours of spa franco shot absolutely right it will bring more challenges for the drivers and perhaps for race control as well with more gravel traps you tend to end up with more cars stuck in gravel traps however we will wait and see how that transpires in all the support races there was just half a dozen support races for fervently driven porsches there was just one brief safety car period so we'll have to wait and see how things go the man who can handle the gravel well enough there although perhaps he will not wish to uh if you're a multiple world rally champion gravel usually doesn't have too much of a worry but in his lmp2 car that's going to be a little tough i swear that standing next to um to uh with the camera phone i think that was something like 1996 british gt champion national parrot was it i think it was there you go and great to see fans on the grid as well robin franz he is just a cool guy robin frank he's just a lot of fun to be around and you know this paddock is just so warm and welcoming and to have fans in the grandstands the drivers the teams you know we we raced here with tumbleweed for two races yeah in the last couple of seasons and we're glad to be here but having having the fans packed in the grandstand here in front of the pits three or four deep along the fence all the way up to la source all around all the seating areas every bit of grass and banking uh there are people enjoying the sunshine and the pit walk this morning was a very very welcome return to some sort of normality not yet got to the stage where we're doing a full driver autograph session but that i'm sure will come as soon as the local authorities allow it wherever we end up racing uh yeah it's great that we've got we've had a race the last two years it's great we've got an event back and it is marvelous it does your heart good to see people out here in the sunshine and a little later not in the sunshine yeah well we'll we'll wait and see you know it was a beautiful sunny morning and it has clouded over a little whether that brings rain or not only the ardennes weather gods will be able to dictate and unfortunately they never give away many secrets corbetta here penske here and you can see that the great and the good of the sports car racing uh firmament have come out here on the left of your picture you can see some of the enormous earth works that have been done from la source down the hill towards our rouge they're clearing off the hillsides and a whole new array of grandstands undoubtedly are going to go in there this is the number 77 car will be started as it usually is by our ever present driver christian reid 74 racers this will be 74. this will be in 74 races of the world endurance championship he is the only man who to this date has done every single one of them at least on the track absolutely yeah eduardo freitas has done them all from race control there's a a whole host of others who have completed every race but uh the only drivers to do so jimmy bruni looking for a good result in the porsches and the iron dame so very different dorian pan joining rahel frey rahul frey the only uh non-covered affected member of what was the original completely correct and a new starter for the iron domes patrick belay there uh with givenest uh he would be a new starter for the iron deck nielsen with her first off there came because very sadly sarah bovee local driver and uh very good at that uh tested positive and had had a uh close contact with michelle gatting in the days leading up to the event both ruled out by the team's own protocol so their young roster driver darian pat was uh rostered in and christina responded as you might expect a professional race driver too rapidly to a call to uh dress in the overalls of the weekend and she will beat the bronze driver it's that question isn't it would you like to come and race in wc and spa in our ferrari the question's not even finished before yes comes back down the line this i i don't suppose that took a lot of thinking that's pascal uh the technical director for toyota kazoo racing having a chat with pfion there's some astonishing statistics about the winners in this race we'll get to those when the third voice joins us because there's a particular reason for the whole one of them uh 98 north west amr aston martin paul delano uh behind this crew look for a while like we're gonna get a top three in qualifying for mastermarticus d station were right in the frame as well until they lost their best laps so third brendan e reed big lap from him best qualifying result for inception racing best for brendan as well and it was he that did the lap as you said paul dalalana northwest amr second on the grid in gte am but there's the man in the blue suit who did the real heavy lifting lost two laps and still produced a pole lap and another pole lap and again a final pole lap in the death to put the tf sport 33 aston on the gt yam pole change that team from the lineup we saw at sebring with rick chavez uh joining uh ben keating and marcus sorensen i believe in the remainder of the season meeting and greeting with kazuki nakachima and a couple of his senior team members from toyota kazoo racing oj's got a bit of toyota history well you know he's got quite a lot of history with quite a lot of manufacturers throughout his uh rallying career so yeah and uh great to see another man from another discipline earlier on today in porsche carrera cup benelux the great cyclist tom bonan was racing won his category and uh of course not the only two-wheeled man to be racing recently with valentina rosso and jorge lorenzo both commencing car curry as well quick look there the number 51 uh ferrari it starts fourth in gte pro after a late session effort from nick tanley put the corvette up to third this is the third race car on the gt pro grid remember the final sister a season for this fabulous and storied class and what a great thing it is to have the corvette here for the full one of year previous world champions nick lapierre here with alpine rast 30 habsburg the faces the aces of the fi world endurance championship and the pole man yeah big lap big big laps from olivier pla to take that overall pole position for click and house on it it does show that the equivalency of performance that or or that has been sort of set up to balance apples oranges pears kumquats and kiwifruit and anything else you bring to hypercar is really having an effect here are jota drivers you saw sam smith there one of the uh media and pr team for the world endurance championship sniffer always on the trail of scurrilous gossip and or a good joke or possibly even maybe a news story absolutely borrowed my belt this morning he was quite worried that he might lose his trousers i'm afraid in the run into uh the race day and that's that's never a good thing picard leads on the other side there of the number 91 porsche that is our pole uh sitting car yep porsche dominant really in qualifying they've been on top of the pile in free practice and in qualifying corvette got quicker and quicker and actually really found the pace in qualifying courtesy of nick tandy tommy milner his teammate never been here before in his life so he did most of the free practice running because although it is only seven kilometers there's a lot of nuances but a lot to learn you don't want to come in here going oh i think this is quick enough first of two people by the way tommy milner described his first laps around spark to me this week the other was roger penske he's never done a lap went round him on the safety cars as julian pressed it's fair to say my first opportunity to sit down with a great man with a group of other journals earlier this weekend what an impressive man that is in terms of his knowledge his outlook and the plans that are coming for penske but you know he's like a vintage bentley not that he's big and green but that he's 80 years old and is still 85 years old and is still thrashing life as hard as when he was 25 years old he is an astonishing human dynamo and his business i mean we know him from his racing but his business empire is absolutely huge fast looking here at the 28th johto sport car now the jota cars line up in 7th 28th and 6th in our lmp2 field lopez and people durrani uh and people joining lincoln house the pulsating car for the first time since the month last year pachito hoping for dramas of a different sort this time out after well the literal showstopper wasn't it um at sebring that uh car more or less destroyed i'm afraid that accident had to be built up around their spare chassis it's the overhead a bunch of young guys in the uh various carrera cups that are being raised here but timo bernhardt yeah you know he's starting to become as almost as omnipresent as somebody like wolfgang ulric if you've got a car race and with gts and timo bernhard isn't there you've got to really seriously think about what you're doing wrong i mean so pole position poles are in place crown's in place that's a great shot of the new grandstand at the top of radion it's a really imposing structure well filled there look it is very fast the views are sensational you can see all the way along up to the bus stop and then from oh rouge from la source down through rouge and up through radio it's a it's a mighty place to come and watch by the way if you've never been to spa francaise it's not always as lovely as this but it is always as challenging and it's just a fabulous place to come to and if you are sitting at home obviously you're not going to be here today there are plenty of other exciting places to go next stop of course is lamar if you've never been to modernza what an earth is wrong with you that's well an opportunity there if you if you've got the opportunity uh later this year to just take a bit of a break uh because of a change in the calendar this year you've got the opportunity for insurance racing on two consecutive weekends with the european le mans series and then just three four days later on track will be the fi world in jones championship so get yourself an airbnb after i've booked mine and uh off you go ten days away italian food gelato beautiful sunshine gelato monster the autodroma nationality di monza elms michelle andermont cup and then wec and gelato yeah yeah i i can't believe that anybody would think that isn't anything other than a fantastic idea 31 car from wrt they've been quick all weekend second on the grid here for the 31 and wrt continue to impress looked like they were going to have pole didn't it for a long time robin fryen's lap looked like uh it was going to be the pole lap and then suddenly along came alessia rivera and we have a pro-am car on pole there is the yam francois parado with nick nielsen and alessia rivera spent a couple of years building up to speed as a trio in european le mans series and in gte am in the world endurance championship and now they're back in lmp2 and tried lmp2 dipped his toe in the water before and then came back to gt decided to return we're about to get the belgian national anthem and as always it was rousing moments when we get the national anthem at uh these major events and uh array of memories here to see it and hear it including the deputy president the fia robert reed [Music] you want [Music] what is [Music] hello [Music] the belgian national anthem sung with some figure and enthusiasm for a near capacity crowd here don't have any official numbers but the grandstands are full and everywhere you look the spectator bankings are doing what they are supposed to be doing filling with spectators fantastic to have them here fantastic to have your company as well as we get ready for the start of the total energy six hours of spa franchise round two of the fia world endurance championship and again an opportunity to race on one of the world's most legendary circuits the upgrade is being cleared off the guests spectators etc tires are coming to the cars now it's not going to be long before these cars get away these are the moments you'll see before people there only putting a glitch ass cap on lapierre that's the kind of spirit we like to see well and that's what the drivers and the team's atmosphere in the paddock is like there's very little of the kind of high volatility formula one uh drive to survive backstabbing and uh and bitchiness going on here general unpleasantness it is it is a i think and i think to a very large degree because it is not individual focused this sport in the way that formula one is in your car yes you're racing all the other cars but it's not just mano amano there's two of you or three of you working as a team against each other i think that diffuses so much potential tension that and the fact that there's not gazillions of dollars at stake don't get me wrong this is not cheap by anybody's standards but it is definitely not in that sort of upper money spending stratosphere of formula one you may wonder why we are seeing child spikes coming down through the forest i was going to suggest exactly that is that how the green flag is arriving with us for our grand oh lord for our grand marshal well planted sir by the way for our grand marshal to wave the cars away it is exactly how the green flag is arriving now that's something that nobody briefed us on i don't like it when people come up with little bit left field ideas i should say by the way we talked about robert reed uh just briefly being here the deputy president definitely president's sporting of the fia under muhammad's alignment and i know there's a wish to see more diversity in motorsport a variety of ways to try new things and to actually get this crossover between this astonishing form of motorsport riding all the guys in the crowd again there's some idiot coming past us on a motorbike mum hello and they're all going oh i should have brought mine i could have had a go this is a great a great example of that crossover isn't it yeah yeah robert reed former world champion co-driver of course with uh richard burns back in the day the lates are much much lamented richard burns i was i was almost well i was actually stopped in my tracks by uh bumping into robert in the corridor uh behind the main offices here a couple of days ago wasn't expected to see him at all and said oh hello and i and almost of course because you're seeing somebody where you're not expecting to almost said what are you doing here until i remembered actually what his new job is and then that sort of became as redundant as most of my stupid questions well there you are there is the series ranks of our grid 37 cars ready to tie the start and our safety car driver just about avoiding uh the trials bikes there is our pole sitting car the glicken house olivier platt set the lap he will be the starting driver sharing with roman duma and pepo durrani and uh that is going to be a very interesting raid this can be a very interesting race for these guys they're not fuel limited the way that the alpine is versus the toyotas this might be a bit of a knock down drag out battle yeah pointed out by the way on uh one of the fan discord servers that follow this race is good afternoon ladies and gentlemen around the world on that later on we will see people with a pepo powered car because it's people mature oh very good very nice very good i'll give the credit but i'll be sticking that one later yeah well yes uh as long as he makes it there obviously just saw a brief shot of uh robert reed with [Music] [Music] we're going to have to do this left-handed i don't know what he's done to his right hand which i have to assume by the way he grabbed the flag he is not a southpaw i think his right hand would normally be his green flag waving hand however we're not looking for style points we won't be judging him on that there's robert reed in the uh center of your shot vice president of the fia milroy there in the uh the inception racing underwear should we call it that way uh welcoming by the way to the uh from the grid where he's been uh on other tv duties uh so is it three time winner of this race it is it is anthony davidson anthony's looking is it did he win it three times three times am i that good with my teammates that good you were in the last car that wasn't an audi or a toyota to win correct on this track correct well there you go there you are not this exact track though because we've had these uh modifications well it wasn't the exact track you just had different run-off different run-off but it does i think no no professional driver would need of too worried about that it does make a difference and uh i think we could see a few drivers getting caught out in every category with these uh changes to this circuit now and it's not as easy as it was it's not as sanitized i think it was becoming and i'm glad i'm glad they've made these changes and um yeah i think they're going to have to really earn their money today right before we start talking about racing which we'll do in a couple of minutes when cars roll off down on the grid massive bunch of fans in the grand stand all of the noise all of the color the t-shirt candles and everything did that feel normal again tell you what standing on the grid down there i said it on there at the time it's just amazing the atmosphere and just soaking it all up it's brilliant to see the crowds are back we are ready to go racing race two of the fia world endurance championship it's the total energy six hours of spa frankish on the grid has been cleared the grandstands have been full the freaks with mayonnaise have been purchased and the beer is being drunk we are getting ready to roll the cars off 37 cars in four different classes with for the first time ever in the 74th race of the world endurance championship an american team on the outright pole clicking house claimed pole yesterday in a fantastically fraught 10 minute qualifying session for lmp and hyper cars and it will be the man who did that poll up olivier platt who leads the field away and and you know what it's like to be on pole position with a big field of cars behind you there's a little bit of responsibility for pacing the field but all of his thoughts are now going to be on what happens when the green lights go on what happens on the run down to the first corner how he's going to escape and make the race's own well it's a tense time for every driver on the grid but it's a good one it's it's you got that adrenaline buzzing through your body and you just saw a glimpse there of the hyper car category at the sharp end of the grid as you'd imagine but more importantly looking at where me on the screen there the toyotas behind both the alpine and the glickenhaus so i really feel like because of that qualifying for lack of qualifying performance yesterday from the toyota we've got a real race in our hands and they are closer wise to the likes of alpine and glickenhaus than they were in sebring so i i think i'm fascinated to see how this is going to unfold we know they're going to go further on fuel the toyota they did in sebring they will here as well because of that hybrid power unit they have but do they have enough speed outright speed in that car to properly challenge the two in front agreement then we're talking about the race within a race because the number eight toyota scored big points the number seven toyota had a crash and so now the crew in number seven are looking to fight back here and try and take an advantage but 8-1 last year on fuel on better strategy not on better speed so there's all of those little elements going on too the other big element in play here is that change in that balance of performance the way it was done for the start of this season and just because this track is designed the way that it is there are very few places on the track where the hybrid will deploy i believe it's only three that they'll get beyond 190 kilometers an hour where they can use that hybrid boost the rest of the time they're effectively carrying that weight well take a look around the side of the circuit the bit between the white lines although it's resurfaced here and taking out the bumps and the compression the actual bit between the white lines for these drivers has not changed at all some of the run-off areas look different there are different vistas aren't there anthony when you go around in some places it seems a lot more sort of sky and open around you and less of a tunnel but the racing surface itself has remained unchanged that's not an actual marina we're not in miami that's just a bit of blue paint on the runoff area well that's not an actual marina either say this it's very much like miami we should have gone over with a with some white paint and painted some uh some white tops on it overnight but we we weren't clever enough to think about that uh yeah seriously speaking so coming into brazil there turn eight you can see the gravel on the outside so that used to be tarmac right up until the tire barrier and psychologically inside the car it makes a huge difference you can just see turn nine as well that uh left hander they're coming into now on the outside gravel is there self-policing in terms of track limits so it's yeah like say that psychological impact when you're inside the car you know you can't afford to overstep the mark push the car beyond its limits and basically get away with it apart from eduardo freitas the the race director shouting in your ear you've just got a black and white flag for your first warning um it's it is a big difference when you know there's an actual physical consequence to running out wide down here on as well the 100 acre wood of of tarmac has banished there is about what is it maybe three meters of tarmac before you get to the gravel trap but further round look down here as you get towards pith path the gravel really hems you in it's it's very much as it might have been sort of 1985 86 you know in uh in the the early reopening years of this track for formula one it does focus the drivers it does mean they're gonna have to think differently about how and when they attack others the other thing i'm watching for is what happens at term one i cannot remember a wc race here where we didn't have somebody going wide an avoidance and they can't do that now so it's going to be calm calm heads here and the source is very different as well on the runoff um so we have seen in practice three practice drivers exploring the limits and going out wide ending up in the gravel all different categories gts or lmp2 we've seen it all really so far and they know when they come up to lap cars later on in the race when there are marbles inevitably appearing offline yeah i think it's going to have to it's going to require a certain amount of extra driver capacity to to make those quick decisions that you need but look i'm passing for this road i'm so excited in all fear we've got the the corvette fight with the with the two porsches just separated by a few tenths of a second the fight from sebring there continues on into this race i expect a race-long battle between those and maybe ferrari can join in as well jimmy bruni on the grid saying look don't discount ferrari they seem to have very good race pace in the long runs in pre-practice lmp2 the toughest competition we've ever seen in an lmp2 grid this will be fascinating stuff drivers out of place on the grid as well and in in that one uh ollie jarvis was saying he made a mistake on the first set of tyres just pierce him way back yeah 14. so they're out of position and then the hyperclass hypercar class that we've already mentioned and gt ham dominant forcing qualifying aston martin but porsche always race well here it just suits that car so are they going to come out on top four classes seven kilometers six hours standby for action we are about to go green for the total energy six hours of spa round two of the fia world endurance championship begins now away we go the clicking house on pole the alpine goes out very wide andre negro trying to make sure he can sweep around the outside without getting into the gravel trap has to really back out of that change between the porsches 92 almost in the gravel skates down the inside of 91 here comes the ferrari that's the 51 car elbows out straight down the inside and the toyota up to second place already is that number eight that's a very good start indeed or was that the number seven car no i think it was the number eight and that is the gr uh motorsport porsche facing the wrong way at the first corner mike wainwright he's avoided trouble about the iron dames have not and are beached in the gravel it will be i think very probably a safety car at the end of the lap bowed wondering how that happened on the on the exit of uh turn 19 the final corner what if there's contact between two cars massive lunch up the inside from one factory porsche on the other there yeah to put those gt pro cars together but they're all very close together in this back of i'll be twos it's the same throttle well that was kevin ester to get back in front of jimmy bruni there's the premier going down the inside of the oh and a tire off there is that from the iron deck that's going to be very interesting so 91 coming back in jimmy bruni that's put a kink in their race now something you never want to see i mean two teammates hitting each other at the start and being ran out wide wasn't he by the 92 and he couldn't go any further because he was on to the uh the red sausage goes safety cars how aggressive were the toyotas up from third and fourth into second and third aggressive is fine but actual contact is particularly between teammates that we saw there there's an 85 car and that is christina nielsen off and into the gravel i did watch by the way not the tv pictures but live uh down towards la source it was hugely aggressive so here we go here is the concept he couldn't go any further the 92 actually getting pushed out he couldn't go further turned around by brendan iribe i think i think that was the inception porsche and she got a left right rib puncture i'm not sure she had maybe it was just a bit of body work here comes the manitou to grab her now they will take her back up the hill to where you used to be able to drive in and put her on terra firma and so she should hopefully make it back to pit lane and the lead cars come pouring through past our comfortable window at least already i think it'd be a lap i think they'll get that car running again within a lap but safety car speed should imagine so mike wayne wright will catch this uh this train the car we saw in trouble the exit the bus stop he has cleared sector two is catching the pack under the safety car jimmy bruni is in that pack of course can't overtake well not the position to overtake at the moment needs to get back for at least a replacement wheel well and uh as you can see christina nielsen is going to require a lift to a point where we hope she's able to rejoin this race hopefully so even if the even if she's dead stick she'll be able to roll downhill and eventually bump start the car let's take a look watch the toyotas on row two of the grid it's the alpine trying to go around the outside out that sort of holds him up and the toyota he went for a late breaking to go around the outside and it didn't quite work for him because it was so dirty out there he got on the dust and you got the you've got the af courser as well joining in overtaking the toyotas that was a brilliant move there uh down the inside on the exit yeah so oh that's a big lock up from the 92 monster locker rooney has to let him go and do the switch back but then i think the car the 90 getting all out of shape was the problem he knew he couldn't go any further over the red curve because you've got the gravel there unlike the past where you could have easily just popped a wheel or more over that and got away with it so already drivers getting caught out but yeah and some uh that's the porsche's top sidewall getting flying up in here that's all on extra that was a big mistake by kevin estrella could have ruined both their races [Music] okay so i'm not sure watch tv there watching well that brings in the fourth member our team down in the pit lane louise beckett louise um early drama then absolutely early drama and the team are ready for the 91 to come in jimmy bruni they've got a full set of tires and a mixture between scrubbed and new ready for that 91 coming in so i'm going to see what they put on because of course i may not put all of them on they've got some body workout ready as well to see if there's any damage well there is a lot of damage there it's just destroyed the rim it's taken the tire off i think structurally the bodybuilder is scuffed doesn't it but i think it's uh i think he might have got away with that in terms of the structural rigidity of the uh of the bodywork easy to remove the wheel the tire's long gone but it was still on the car actually that's the key is the whole of the tyre tread and all the metal that supports it got thrown out and that's what rips cars to be exactly usually is that kind of flailing tire that that whips around and sheds all the bodies oh no hang on he's saying gentle reminder pit entry remains closed pit entry remains closed the bit the little like frisbee thing we saw flying up in the air that was the outer rim of the of the wheel because that was machined off so change your four yeah scrub tyres isn't it so here they couldn't send him out because the safety car queue is too close so pit exit is closed so we can't send you too late right okay now full service you can join the back of the queue when it goes past and it's green and there you go so full set of tyres and a lap down and here now is where the recovery drive has to happen and suddenly ferrari again okay one down one to go thank you and you know what my heart goes out to uh to jimmy bruni there because that really wasn't his fault at all i mean yeah he he gave his teammate who was all locked up on the inside room he did the switchback he played it right and then the car on the outside of him getting all squirrely on the curb was the thing that he didn't expect to happen exactly right safety car in the first lap of the total energy six hours of spa franca shot so we are under safety car conditions and again as the 91 porsche goes back out you had first-hand experience of that safety car and how hard they can be driven to stay up to speed ahead of these hyper car prototypes and and that's you have to have that don't you they are fast but no match for a racing car no exactly right well timo bernhardt commiserates there with uh richard leetz let's hear from estran for the big bomber okay so he's got big and flat spots that's going to be hard to hang on to actually and uh you know it it when he gets he's not going to know how bad it really is until he gets fully up to speed but um there's a big mistake from kevin there and uh he'll be kicking himself you feel bad for the team bad for your own race as well and uh although he's still in a decent position on track i'll be gonna be very surprised if he if not uh severely hindered by those huge flat spots and the problem is he will have been look they have been looking to double stint those tyres they don't have a set of tyres for each fuel allocation so you have to start double stinting tires those are brand new the fronts have done qualifying one running qualifying three laps the rears are absolutely brand new and the fronts are rooted so he's gonna have to live with that penalty and if they have to change them at the first fuel stop they will that will come back and bite them at the end of the race the uh just looking at the screen there the jota had an amazing start is that car 38 with antonio felix de costa on board so he lines up now on track just behind the hyper cars we go green again at spa and it is olivier platt that leads from sebastian premium mike conway the toyota number eight got ahead of number seven at the start and they both move up into the top three ahead of the alpine that started on the front row toyota looking for their sixth consecutive their seventh win here in what is now the tenth race in the fia world endurance championship the last car that won in spa frog shot in a six-hour race that was not either a toyota or an audi was anthony davidson you were driving it come on [Music] the year before the wec one of three overall uh okay we're not hearing kevin h i'm afraid okay didn't didn't catch that yes it was it was the it was any vibrations in ilmc anthony davidson the last man to win who wasn't in the toyota or a or an audi and in fact overall and and this shocked graham goodwin the last time porsche won here 1986 [Music] overall yeah in thousand k's and that was so bob warlick and frankie linsky in a vaulter run 962c so they never won with the here with a 919 which is okay really yeah that's possible i don't know how many tracks they didn't win on with the porsche but uh it can't be too many side by side didn't they lead battle paul dalalana was the leader behind the safety car and ben keaton the pole man goes around the outside nice move yeah isn't it just nicky look well by the way right behind this pair in the 46 car that's been a former car all weekend led uh all three three practice sessions that car with two of the drivers involved uh which uh puts a lot of pressure on if you look volley the bronze rank driver those three they've got two quick guys to come in the 46. this is intriguing seeing the lmp2 cars pretty much matching and bianca's hang on to the back of the alpine who i thought would have slightly more pace maybe they're just bedding in the tires don't want to push them too fast too early on but yeah it's it's a at least a close fought battle at this stage in the hypercar class but the gt fight carries on the ferraris good to see them up there as well they weren't in sebring they're up there now porsche ferrari corvette that's what we want we want all three makes in with the shout now whether ferrari's race long pace remains enough whether corvettes remains enough whether kevin escher can fight off the vibrations and still see at the end of a stint never mind a double stint remains to be seen in the lead porsche but that mistake by ester which put jimmy bruni at the tail of the field in a lap back is uh going to cost them let's hear from louise beckett in the pits so i've just been speaking to the porsche team because i don't know if you realized on tv but they changed the tyres which we saw with the fresh set and then they changed them back again and the reason for that is because under safety car you're not supposed to change all four tyres so they actually have put those tires back on and just changed the rear left that's what they were doing you're allowed to change the damaged one yeah good spot louise measure and while louise was chatting we saw nick tandy move up to second place somewhere in a room not too far away the head of gm racing ahead of corvette racing the head of corvette customer racing the head of cadillac dpi is leaping up and down because it is all the same person miro konopka just in front of them in the arc bratislava lmp2 car that's the bright yellow car this is going to cause a frustrating roadblock really uh for kevin estrada there in the porsche because he idea would like him just to pull away into the distance and but you know they've got the speed in the straight line the lmp2 car but not necessarily in the corner especially when you've got uh the uh the bronze driver out the wheel 60 year old miro konopka from bratislava is the man who runs arc portable racing club bratislava you're saying about the the gap between the hypercars anthony and the leading lmp2s that's beginning to open up what if it is just the way you manage the difference between the michelin and the goodyear ties remember spec goodyear tires for lmp2 is michelin rubber for all of the hyper cars maybe it's just something about the way those those tires are managed on there's a rather different surface of parts now uh particularly up through radion well don't forget that the michelin tire is a competition tire um it's it's bespoke for these cars and uh the goodyear is a customer tire um obviously still a racing tyre but it's uh the technology is quite different due to the uh the requirements of the uh of the regulations and um so yeah quite quite a different uh amount of uh cash pumped into them as well but you know for uh for a spectator the good years i mean i think it's a very well suited tire to the lmp2 and also there's i would say arguably a bit more tire management that comes into play in the lmp2 category as well and the driver is going to have to be on top of that as the race unfolds that the hypercar should be able to go further on their rubber but you'd expect that alessia rivera in the chrome car under real pressure now for third in lmp2 rivera put the car on pole position lmp2 didn't get the best the start now our race leader in gt bro kevin nest fighting that imbalance and ties their big lock up out of uh rivage boo on through the coup of jackie eats piling on the speed down the hill and here is where miro konopka gets away from him but from pithbath through the slower corners that's where he will try and fight back should be pruney by the way is on class leading pace in gta pro but frustratingly of course way down the field and lap down after that being forced into that pit stop from the turn one contact and subsequent well call it a puncture loss of the tire completely could have been a lot worse luckily somebody in the porsche gt team really had their head screwed on and really knows the rules whole new set of tires no no force mature only the damaged tyre and don't you dare bring the fuel hose out either because you can't refuel under a safety car so really really on the ball olivier platt really really on the ball as well just creeping away from sebastian webby up here on the street once you get above 190 kilometers an hour you'll be able to deploy that hybrid drive so that will help stop the glickenhaus getting further away but they don't need to all the toyota need to do is just sit there with that distance the clicking house speed isn't enough to overcome and surpass the longevity that the toyota has in terms of the fuel uh that they can use i'm expecting to go around three maybe even four laps longer based on what we saw in sebring per stint on fuel well let's hear from luis beckett in the pit lane lou well the dramas continue with the 91 porsche because the team are out ready for rooney to come back in again all right well i wonder if he has got an issue or whether they are throwing everything out in terms of i mean it was only one damaged tyre they can't just be bringing him in to top off for fuel what have we done five laps he's done they are bringing him in maybe maybe if the front left took a hit you can see the scuff marks on the front sorry at the front the rear left hook here yeah i can see the scuff marks on the front left and uh maybe he's reporting some uh ill balance from that car but yeah we're seeing that the 91 investigation possible violation yeah that's because he came in when the pits were closed but they will clearly say no force pusher he didn't have a wheel that's fire fair enough change here that's uh christian reid being passed by brenda narib river dropped back uh at the start of the race but uh recovering back now the 56 up into seventh position still a one-two in gtm by the way um and this is in fact it's a one two three for aston martin uh with the number 71 and then the 21 ferraris both red and white ferraris it is uh 71 is gabby aubry in the first of the two ferraris tony vallander yeah teddy b lander teddy finland and gabriel aubry the only non-bronze drivers who started for their gte am teams no tomo fuji he's uh he's a silver yes indeed you're absolutely right um so yeah but a terrible start to the race from porsche unfortunately it's going to be an interesting one for louise to put some microphone under those one mr kevin estrada being in that uh team debrief this afternoon there's only ever one rule isn't it and that's don't hit your teammate yeah that's the only rule there are no other rules of engagement don't hit your teammates i always used to go into any endurance race telling myself something will happen that will be out of your control further up the field if you've qualified in a lowly position or even if you're right at the front something in an endurance race always happens that kind of either hands you the win or goes against you and you've got to try the best you can to control that situation not happening you don't want to be the one where something happens um you know if you can manage it yourself the best you can and that very much was in kevin ester's hands on the first corner of a six-hour endurance race why take such a massive risk we know the gts follow each other lap after lap with the same speed there or there abouts and it comes down to the finite details of pit stop strategies and and who can keep their tires alive at the right time and who picks their way through the traffic the best don't know it all in the first corner of a six-hour race he should know better i just don't think he i don't think he was trying to pass he came down on the inside to try and make it two porsches wide at las sauce so there was nowhere for the ferraris to slot up the inside the road drops away you know that i know that he knows that somehow his tires weren't warm enough and he locked the fronts but then then he's in a world of hurt you can risk locking up on the front into turn one here in spa on the dirty side going into turn one i find it very hard honestly to to to give him too much leeway there he should have known better fair enough these totals are gradually reeling in the glick in the house in fact these cars are just about to catch should be bruni on track also we saw just before uh switching clear overall race back in who's now started to get pro drivers and ferraris playing league frog with aston martin's with gabiobri uh already ahead of thomas he's not the pro driver he is in the am class that was a pass for position that was for bronze yeah up behind jimmy bruni the race lead at olivier park the all red clicking house with the white roof and then the two toyotas with hunter killer mode engaged from sebastian buemi but very difficult to attack him it's very good out of corners calm said well too much understeer they're reeling him in that is right point out that toyota anglican house will rightly be running toyota certainly in their low drag le mon downforce spec lebon aerodynamic bodywork so they will have less grip in the twisty stuff in the middle because it's all about high speed look how the traffic has worked against the toyota there the glickenhaus just snuck through the iron dame's car before turning 12. and the community shakes his head as he's seen what i've seen yeah and uh this is the way it goes you win some you lose some in the traffic well the good news is as we saw earlier on the iron dame's cart not only rejoined but he's racing they're a lap down jimmy bruni is a lap down and they're in close company and actually christina nielsen staying in close company with jimmy bruni he's not pulling much away from us in that that that was four position uh that was jimmy bruni going by uh the delayed christina nielsen four positions so jimmy back up into not last 36th position in traffic that cost the total something like 1.2 seconds they'll start to claw that back again the alpino is definitely now losing ground it's been holding on for the first five or six laps last three it has not been holding on and it was only a little break in traffic that allowed them to uh sort of stay slightly in touch with the toyota so we now have three horses in this race i'm surprised the alpine couldn't uh keep up with them as well they're just slowly dropping back they're now almost six seconds to drift who took that power cut post sebring it's a it's a chunky one it's not massive but it's significant and it is a power circuit as we well know we bought a few drops huge rocks at times most of that uh gap through traffic clawed back almost immediately by separately but again loses a little bit of time behind in this case it's the 88 car of uh fred pordat in the attempt to proton card the yellow and blue car there middle of the screen frogging through the gtm runners now and our third pick caller uh from the gr racing team we saw might rain white wine mike wayne wright spinning at the start uh he's coming with it he's coming with the slow play yes slow puncture and had that change so they have made an um just watching this restart again here martin i'm watching the jota on the left hand side of your screen the green car on the left-hand side so that's felix decosta where does he make up all these positions goes around the outside of the prema he's stuck behind the wrt there that's going to be interesting yeah we'll have to watch it in conway's mirrors because somewhere he goes brave all the way down the inside from la source doesn't he got a yellow flag at the final corner this is on board in the car with sebastian vuemi [Music] thinks about going down the inside of the alpine and the alpine breaks late to go around the outside he goes a bit too far and the other toyota's trying to muscle his way in as well oh he's taking no prisoners there is he didn't give him any room and andre in the crowd checking the mirrors checking the mirrors checking the mirrors on board this united auto sports now there's antonio felix de costa let's ride with this a little bit longer decaster is following the toyota this is the premier league gets in front of the premier there but now he's behind the wrt so it's up the hill somewhere he gets a big toe and this is uh so it's the hit initially and then they hit again on the exit oh it's just i mean what do you do if you're the the team manager reporter oh look at that just diving down the inside it's just way too late but there's no room for error now with that gravel trap waiting for you it really caused so many teams out too many drivers i think the two ferrari drivers did well not to go off laughing exactly honestly you know what yellow by the way oh no the eyes are very plain that was the reason that was earlier on but gabi obrie has had dramas he's been an incident at turn 19 which brought up the yellows 71 car is now on pit lane and has actually just now left again but there's been some incident we've not seen at the bus stop which has led the 71 car that was up into third in gtam um off track by the look of it and then pity if we were in the speaker's commentary position where we were last year because there were no speakers because there was no public which would be right over the bus stop you might have seen that out of our window but we're now halfway along the pit lane in the other big box which is lovely um so yeah rivera just watching on the screen here fighting the prem up behind him with lorenzo colombo on board where's that speed gone what do they do to the car in qualifying where they just trounce the field pole position yet again for air of course but looks like they're in a bit of trouble in race pace with a primer car behind putting pressure on them but the cars in front aren't getting away so in terms of pace they've pretty much got what sean gale for wrt has got antenna finished this is 88 the yellow and blue car and 31 this is at uh that's an off track passive i've ever seen one i'm sure that'll get looked into it i don't think he expected the 88 car fred poor dad to be coming out quite so wide here's the number eight toyota yeah so he's looking after managing the front tyres he reported he had understeer earlier on probably not helped by the fact he's just continuously running in that dirty air behind the glicken house you see that huge rear wing on that car as jim glickenhaus himself described it it's an old-school race car that's going to be kicking up a lot of turbulent air not helping the toyota behind with the understeer and in low drag setup anyway you're losing a little bit of that downforce you're losing more of what you might normally have yeah so definitely uh a big deficit following olivier if he could get by and get into clean air then suddenly he might find within a couple of laps the toyota's transformed of course seth would then find something else to be playing around as he needs perfection last batch of traffic though did go the toyota's way so it's a lot closer now declared the uh for the moment last group of gt cars now they're in clear air and now we'll see whether or not the pace uh with what just about half an hour run of the six hours uh whether or not they've got the pace to use the hybrid where they can close enough to get by the deck in the house we're about to save it we saw rio here were there and with the elaborate hand gestures brendan hartley the other two drivers of the number eight toyota it's currently the better placed of the two toyotas in the championship and although victory in sebring has given the alpine team the lead at the moment the number eight definitely looks to have a little bit more going for it than number seven they catch paul dalalana in the 98 northwest amr david richards from pro drive aston martin racing is here this weekend in the garage and they both go by and suddenly now number seven is right with the number eight and anthony that is so frustrating for a driver that you get held up and brought right back to something you've just spent 10 laps creeping away yeah it's the natural evan flow that you have through the traffic and like i said you there are winners and losers but looks like the quicken house there of claude just going up the hill in no rouge i think he's just gonna get round the cars in front after the corner when you know these cars have more downforce than the gt cars so if you catch a gt as you approach oh rouge it's a disaster you lose all your momentum but through this part they're going to look home yeah actually the gts these days are quite you know they're quite similar in speed to the hyper cars yeah the top speed is not far if you and you saw tomorrow fuji moving over to the left they go no i'm going to have to come back for the racing line i don't want to go straight off and there we go he dives down the inside into turn eight now drivers are saying there is so much more front-end grip here in rivage brucelle whichever it's called these days than there ever was before it's totally transformed that corner it's now a real overtaking opportunity whereas before you just washed straight off the circuit and again it didn't work the way it totals it looked ever at every point uh at the end of the devil straight as if it was going to go the totals went it just didn't again and i think the glickenhaus was just going to pop through there yeah on the inside of turn 12 as well leaving the toyotas to uh in a medium speed series of corners to be behind the ferrari losing uh a bit more time before turn 14 does he think about going down the note not quick enough to get down the inside there so you know you've got to wait and i don't even think he's going to do it through curveball freya either at turn 15. so look at this delaying delaying getting on power and that's given olivier playing i think that's just that extra breathing room that he needed i think the additional thing we should say because i don't think we have so far is they happen to lock in traffic but blah is doing brilliantly in traffic he really is he's got some sort of force field so no major rain yet at spa a few little drops but nothing to worry about and olivier pla in the red and white clicking house leads the two toyotas red and white number eight ahead of red and white number seven that is your top three overall and the lead trio in the hypercar class and here is the battle in lmp2 38 the jyotica antonio felix de costa is ahead of all of this club and then sean gale is ahead of lorenzo colombo the chrome carlesia rivera then will owe in red white and blue of united auto sports he is following them through and that is a gte am porsche battle behind him nick lloyd violet christian reed and brendan erie by the three porsches in that order and that's the battle [Music] [Music] hear from luis beckett i just spoke to the 71 team and they said that gabby actually just did a drive-through he felt like after that contact with dalalana that there was damage to the tires and the rear that the team have said for him to carry on all right well look at this cars all over the place six cars in two different classes and you know when you catch a little tight knot of cars like that and you're battling for position whether it's the lead or another position in your class and you know that's that that's where drivers earn their money that's really where you make your bread butter it's not going fast on the circuit it's dealing with all the other fast-moving machines it's the attribute you need for one of the attributes you need to to be a successful sports card driver we're seeing this battle continue here between the wrt of sean gale and lorenzo colombo in the uh in the premier car and that replay that we saw around blanchemon turn 17 where the promo went off uh to overtake the gt car off the track they don't like that that will be analyzed by race control and uh i would expect that to be popping up on our screen soon enough and i don't think that colombo is going to come out that very well but look at the advantage he's taken from it look at the gap from the car that was right with him it wasn't just getting by the gt car he took a further advantage in getting away from the car is in competition it's very really simple you can't overtake off the track absolutely depending you know it doesn't matter whether it's a lapped car or a car you're racing in the same category they're pretty hot on that in in weck and um yeah i agree with it as well perhaps you have to overtake on the racetrack and there are few places here where you can get away with that i mean it was a good sort of formation red arrow starburst with three gt cars and three lmps trying to find a way through but if there isn't a way through you have to be patient and wait one other race control message we've seen uh is that no further action for anything that happened at the start so whatever is determined in terms of the uh the impact between the two porsches that's i guess 19 at the start which is the bus stop which is obviously yeah well the last message is about turn nine i don't know there's a separate message yeah but that's where that's obviously [Music] think the 56 car and the 85 car okay alessio rivera uh in the number 83 lmp2 car being warned about track limits and uh it was the premier car it was the premier car with the white uh rear there that you were seeing from the top that we were saying was probably the one that was going to get awarded let's wait and see what happens exactly this may be an earlier off-track incident for the chrome car let's hear from louise beckett in the pit lane keep an eye out for the number 41 wrt because the team have just jumped into action they've got left set of tyres already they believe that there's a rear left puncture on that 41 wrt okay toyota number eight very close to the clicking house into turn 18 19 and it looks like olivier players just starting to struggle with the grip of that car and i think he gets away with it through the source but how's his run he's got to have a strong run now through our rouge to make the gap well the number seven toyota needs to be right there to go through it as well yep don't worry here we go here we go in the slipstream duck to the inside i think this corner is going to be his he's got to be super late on the brakes he's on the dust but yes he makes it stick now can place stay with him through this series of corners buemi in free air most importantly as sebastian very in number eight takes the lead what can the number seven toyota do mike conway cannot let the number eight car get away if bwemi can pass then so too should conway but it had to be up the kemmel straight he needed that run through our rouge up radio up the camel straight deploy the hybrid all the tricks in the book and conway's not quite being close enough yet to be able to follow through there is the real team wrt car that's the fight surprised i think we saw the start again you'll see that car with a massive lockup yeah uh coming into turn one so i think he's been carrying that damage uh for quite some time that's not gonna be a quick stop either and here is where it finally let's go and that the team will have sensors on the car that is warning that the temperature is rising and that's almost always a sign that the tyre is going soft even if the driver's not noticed it and i'm sure he will have the tpms yeah the tyre pressure sensor like you have on some road cars these days or most roach cars these days for safety as the toyota now of mike conway very close behind the cliff they've got ferrari in the way so i think that's going to shield the attack from conway he's going to try around the outside though and meet him on the inside of 19. beautiful move there from conway now does he get off the corner don't forget that the clicking house has all its power available immediately and uses it but again the ferraris are in the way conway using line and length to hold off olivier platt that was a big move by mike conway he knew he needed to get on with it but if the cooking house uh conway needs to get this ferrari before uruz yes he does the click and how's not gonna make it and there you go massive gap gonna open up here now and uh takes the fight away yeah from uh yeah any further attack for plan critically for the number seven toyota frees up conway immediately to go after buemi let's see it again so i thought he was gonna be shielded here and uh it's hard to know what to do for olivier player there and he he probably anticipated the fact that he had to break early on the inside for the ferrari allowed the toyota it's easier when you're behind everyone like conway was no one's attacking you from behind so that gave you the chance to place your car where you uh yeah in the most advantageous advantageous place that you can to make the move into lmp two pit stops for the eighty three five twenty three one twenty eight and thirty four all on pit road now and hearing from louie in the pits driver changes are underway yeah so 37 minutes is as far as they've run that's shorter than a normal stint but then of course they've had their outlap to the grid and they're just making sure that their fuel calculations aren't wrong sean gale for wrt the more red of the red and white cars you're looking at behind here forever their first season wrt now in their second season with the wec premier's first season of sports car racing they're doing exactly what we thought they would do going well okay i believe we will be focusing stuff but keep an eye on a few lines keeping an eye on a few lights it will be soon only yeah you have a set position on track of where the driver and team know from your pre-race briefing you know if the light comes on the fuel light comes on at a certain place on the track you have to come into the pits that lap right that was celestia rivera so there's been a driver change at a of course yes the house france while pirado is in the car so does that mean they're going to single stint it's not the hottest day here it's not as physically violent and brutal as sebring in any way stretch or form but getting alessia rivera to deal with a start and then putting pirodo in for his 90 minutes would probably be a really good time to do it it's dry it's bright it's sunny the car's in good nick it's barely been used one careful owner perfect time to do it second and third in class come in but antonio felix de costa who obviously set off from the start because he thought he was a hyper car as fast as the alpine he still stays out let me tell you just the extent of that uh that uh stint at the moment for antonio finister costa is you keeping on those pit stops averaged as antonio 207 837 by contrast andre negrow in the outbeat is just 0.3 of a second quicker per lap on the stint so far contrast as well with let's say for instance sean gale in the number 31 car three seconds a lap slower at the moment than antonio felix costa across the stint second third and fourth in the pit lane no driver changes no change sean gale remains in a wrt lorenzo colombo in at prema willow inn stays in there vector sport they're in as well fifth place they're having a good run as well brand new british base team and just a whisker quicker in the maybe not i think they came in about a car length apart they're going out of car so all the fuel rigs now in lmp2 you're not allowed to modify any component within them it's around 35 seconds it used to be around 28 27 seconds worth of fuel that would go in so because they're all on a spec uh fuel bowser this gravity fed and more than likely we're going to see pit stops of of similar times now between teams rather than other teams having a a bit of a an extra advantage here or there it's all those kind of little tiny details of how how all your driver hits his marks if he starts to ease off before he stops or just stops how quickly the hose gets on i mean we're talking fractions yeah you can't run on fumes he's obviously gone around another lap and their calculations are right the fuel lights come on and that's his engineer going okay fuel only blocks this lap so he will stay in no driver change and you give the driver all of this when he's on his in lap early in the lap probably as he's halfway up the kemmel straight so he knows in his head exactly what the plan is that's how you eradicate mistakes so and maybe the plan was as well to try and go long on the fuel and antonio a very uh well accomplished world champion in former e of course uh knows all about energy management and fuel his energy of course so if you lift and coast long enough sometimes you can even save yourself an extra laps worth of fuel over the competition and it pays dividends later on when some teams need a splash and you don't and that's exactly how toyota number eight won the race last year i don't think at any stage maybe not even on one lap other than during fuel stops were they ever ahead of number seven until the end when they had less fuel to put in because they saved a lap on a couple of stints and and that made the difference that one in the road he's true antonio musso he's driven a brilliant stint here i mean he didn't have the competition of course from sean glow he was their silver driver in the wrt they will come back at them later on when the likes of roberto gonzalez the joke the jota silver driver gets behind the wheel so we have to remember that de costa opened up a thirteen and a half second gap on sean galileo who did a respectful job there uh in the wrt of a silver driver but it will be you know tables turned when it's roberto in the car against the likes of robin friends for example in the wrt so let's wait and see with that one as it unfolds we can put it into a different context there are five drivers in this race that have averaged in the 207s for these opening stints the four hyper car drivers and antonio finished acosta there you go that's impressive all right we're going to catch up with alessia rivera louise busy lining him up meanwhile here comes the pass for second or does it doing a good job of placing the car there in a defensive position well there'll be a lot of people that know sean galileo's name from already from endurance racing things like him series but lorenzo colombo is really recent convert from single-seater racing and he's i can see exactly why premier have chosen to put him in this car because he is producing again as he did in sebring some pretty impressive racing it's a brand new team they're not new to ella and they're new to lmp2 they don't know how these cars work on spa and here they are battling for second place in lmp2 luis beckham is down in the pits at af quarter with our pole man alessia rivera alessia rivera uh great run from you hand in the car over to francois parado and our only driver that's come in how was that start the stuff i have to say was really good especially the first turn and then i was stuck between the toyota i had to i had to lift and i had a poor exit after the urush and they lost to position nothing i could do i struggled a bit with the pace to keep the pace of galilee but then yeah the race is still long now francois for sure we try to keep the pace and yeah still five hours so it's really long is there any differences from your qualifying because obviously your qualifying pace was right up there so how come that's changing in the race the setup is quite different for sure because here we start with uh more fuel and so the feeling with the car is uh different also the tires are uh there is more wear and it's a bit different to drive but in free practice we were really good both in both condition and so now we have to push and i've just got to ask you about these nicknames that we've got here tell me about this starsky hutch the boss for sure is an idea of the boss yeah so it's uh he's the he's the boss and he can do what you want thank you no question who starsky is look at leslie rivera's that's paul michael glaser's hair no question ask your father anthony i i love this i remember that i'm old enough i love the spirit of this team we were telling the story a little earlier uh it started with the european monsters where the same trio are racing as well if you get it could we get a shot off the fuel filler with the 83 car we'll tell that story it doesn't uh play well uh that story isn't afraid for france [Music] he could take it the boss yeah well well we heard from alessia that that they definitely had a really good qualifying set up not quite as as balanced and made as comfortable on the tyres as they'd hoped is that insects i think there's an awful lot of insects in there and i was noticing even on lap three on board with the toyota there's so much splatter on the windscreen it looks like he's done eight hours at the moment declines towards decision number 22 gives the drive-through to car 98 for causing a collision at t-19 with car 71 drive through penalty car 98 for causing a collision with car 71 so what we saw there i think that was perfectly fair that was uh gabriel and paul dalalana oh that's a late move down the inside there's van sam voice away with it every great gt and sports car driver in belgium is now part of wrt there's there's nobody who's not maybe some light drops at times but track should remain clear expecting it turns 15 16 okay well the team saying nick tandy has settled down now into fuel economy entire preservation mode that's a big part of racing in gte because you don't have enough tires for a fresh set every time you fill up so you've got to manage them and they say basically we do not have the speed of the porsche and by by definition then uh struggling to match the speed to a degree of the race leader but ahead of the ferraris and we operate past didn't we nick tandy going up to second ahead of the ferrari and so you know second place it's uh it's a good place to to end the first hour well he's he's hovering around four seconds four and a half seconds behind now at this stage and sort of staying there next possible to turn 16. reign possible turn 11 to turn 16. um can i just say that sebastian bremi was taking no prisoners over all the curbs there at red yacht that looked like a really uncomfortable run meanwhile in the pit lane any reign of theo i louise butler hear that radio call and i was just about to say to you we've got dark clouds ahead right now there's a significant difference to when the race started oh the angel of doom everybody well let us know when you're getting wet you haven't got your high heeled wellies on yet though have you you're on a full dry setup got them packed good girl uh never did you ever underestimate the weather here graeme goodwin for all five seasons indeed she's not called louise uh for nothing more than liberties with those kerbs wasn't me uh sebastian buehme and what we've seen over the last two or three laps with the two toyotas now free and away from the clicking houses their lap times have come down very substantially indeed the fuels coming out the car and dipping into the 206s regularly now anthony put your toyota shirt back on now and you're the number seven team and you see buemi rogering it over the curbs like that i mean he uh proper full-on monstering you know that he is merely driving the wheels off the car well they've traded uh fastest lap times the last two laps so buemi 206.0 the last lap around but that before that uh it was conway that did the 206-0 and buemi did the 206-2 so he's going quicker again yeah conway will be trying everything he can but this thing josh there's a past there previous team uh team um and he's gone up the inside of what the man that will now henceforth always been owned on this broadcast as the boss i wonder how many times manu color it can't be without number but there must be a few must have one here for pescarolo surely so these three we're watching right now are the team's lowest denominator of driver with all due respect so joshua pearson there uh making a move on frontier pirodo into the calm and it just puts into perspective that fight you're you're you're having to deal with uh between the bronze drivers and the silver drivers you see the level of that extra level of performance that pearson who we all saw try the beautiful race in sebring he's doing it yet again here for the united sports team now there are two battles going on because these are all battling for position in lmp2 but there is a subset in lmp2 the pro and battle and francois pirado is still happily leading that his nearest pro-am rival is number 45 algarve pro racing car of james allen who is in 17th overall uh six cars further back christian reed been warned for abusing track limits [Music] i can tell you manu collard has won here three times in europe in the modern series in three different classes uh going back to 2006. look at this fight between the premier car of colombo and sean galileo well both of them are in gp2 right now aren't they dialed in they or something that this is a proper single seater fight and you know for second place again talked about nick tanya in the corvette in second place if you end the first hour in second place that was a heart in the mouth moment there for lorenzo colombo and of course you know normally that would be a little less high risk but now suddenly you're locked up down the inside now you're simply remembering the other guy can't go wide to avoid you and so you're trying to dig yourself out of the hole you've just put yourself into yeah you know and all of those instincts that you've had from racing here over the last three or four years you have to recalibrate because that lunge there is no longer a safety net at la source and there is no marina that they do need to paint that in or have a paper boat in there or something miracle just about gave enough room on the exit of the corner i'm not sure he realized that the car in front was locked up and kind of semi out of control with that stage clicking house is in from third place and that moves the alpine up so the alpine has gone further on fuel than the clicking house that's a worry there's mira konopka using a little bit of the escape road as they come down the hill so toyota's still out there of course yeah first off for clicking house 23 laps into the race with some safety car to play into that one as well so what speaking of safety cars what you're hoping watching sean gale on screen now what you're hoping if your wrt is for a safety car because you put your silver driver in now it's that's why it's a game of strategy maybe a bit more risky for for the likes of jota because you've got a higher chance usually of a safety car at the start of the race well like we saw but if it came now now the cars are spread out it would be a disaster for jota because wrt would be right back in the game with galileo closing up that 13 or now 15 second deficit and you've burned some of the best tires with some of the best driver and you're still waiting if you're joking for your silver drive to get in so that's the kind of game they're playing in lmp2 here squirrelly moment by the way for olivier plara as the power cable a couple of years ago last year three years ago four years ago cars off would have been covered by full course yellow or a local yellow now you've got to send in a truck to drag them or lift them out of the gravel we are going to see more safety cars and fewer full course yellows full course yellow freezes everybody's positions and the gaps between them safety car bunches everybody back up and the reason for bunching everybody up under a safety car is for that very reason of there is a dangerous situation on track there's a digger on the track and if you can bunch the cars when that bunch comes goes past you you've got a longer period of no cars on track to allow freedom of movement movement with the with the go again oh comes back onto the race in line but uh wasn't fully under attack into that corner as the alpine comes in for its pit stop here one lap later than the glickenhaus pit lane louise beckett what do you know well they have got a full set of tires out but no driver which would suggest to me they're there just to precautionary and it looks that way at the moment doesn't it from what you can see yeah uh it's not raining yet but louise is already hiding in the garage there you can just see her hello louise and watching the action and i mean there's massive amounts of fly squash i mean it's very very humid here uh drive through for car 56 for penalty with okay a shock with the iron dame's car uh for contact with christina nielsen so 56 is the team project one car brendan irene so he had a great run in qualifying brendan to put the car third in gte am but he was the man who nerfed off christina nielsen in the iron dame's car on the opening lap so he will take a drive through penalty so he's still battling for second place sean gale and lorenzo colombo canelo doing a great job to fend this off isn't he because uh is not in the mood to take uh very much in the way of prisoners here yeah khalil i think a good run willow in hanging on in the 22 united auto sports car josh pearson in fifth place in lmp2 in the 23 united car pinsky and six with manu color we saw him move up ed jones for jota has gone ahead of francois parado soho to hashem lacy and half a second behind pirodo is vector sports ryan cullen so they're queuing up to get by francois parado oh he just came to the shot of the toyota i think the premier car was going to have a go down the inside and he no he's got it covered once again a few spots of rain track has been declared wet race director says race lights on in rain mode the track has been declared wet the track has been declared wet all cars with rain lights on in low mode all cars with rain lights on in low mode so that basically means low mode is basically real light high mode is like you've left your fog lights on you because we need to have the lights on that's mandatory but you don't need to have them in you know big spray conditions um and the significance anthony declaring the track where clearly the track is not wet but another but the regulations say until it is declared wet you cannot use wet tyres so what he's saying is if i declare the track where now if it rains you can come in when you want to put wet tyres on if he's not declared it wet you can't fit wet tyres even if noah is rowing past you just let's hear from louise beckett yeah there's definite drops now falling in the pit lane and quite a few teams are getting wet tires out ready all right well it may be that mirror canopy has been caught out maybe he uh just briefly ran out of talon there maybe it is a little bit damp let's hear from our race leader the drops tire two tire two okay what does that mean oh well obviously they know we don't need to know it'll mean left sides only or fronts only or something he comes in and critically exactly as they did last year but from behind the number seven toyota they have gone a lot longer [Music] good slow-mo shot there the top of uh radiant yep just got away with that that was just a legal one so the number eight car has gone longer now the question is will the number seven car be able to use the undercut to get ahead of the sister car there's been a change of position finally where has he done it oh look through rouge so he got hindered galileo from the slower portion front and both cars dot either side but it's colombo that had the momentum he was coming up with a heck of a head of steve wasn't he and actually neither of them completed the part of the porsche on track so yeah no harm no foul there's that one contact for the toyota who was that conway there no sorry who scythed down his side pod [Music] i'm not sure yeah you're supposed to miss them as you go past the slower machine easier said than done satoshi oshino by the way now aboard the triple seven and this is the pole sitter for the pro uh gt am class uh ben keating i think staying in he normally does satoshi hashino uh also as you said in the d station car of course a leading in pro-am and that was tony velander the finn who is leading looking here into europol and real team real team with that puncture into europol with a definite lack of pace jakob schmikowski the son of the owner of into europol bakery and team and cooper is uh their gentleman driver so again this is not quite comparing apples with oranges israel fray [Music] think that she is likely to go into the car third that's often the way they play it cooper with angolan portuguese andrade behind him angolan born and bred but racing under a portuguese license that's not porpoising that's still bumpy sort of in resurfacing you wander in a in a year or maybe over next winter where they're going to look at that run into the braking area because it's not just our cars i think that that show it as being still pretty bumpy it's just it is just pretty bumpy well this corner here throughout rouge has like to say before that the profile is the same but it's really changed the way the drivers attack or approach the corner now because the lack of bumps and that compression that you get usually aurouge dictates your ride height because of the bumps but now because the lack of them is being resurfaced i think they can get away with running the car lower than they usually could on this track but like yeah going into the final chicane under the brakes it's uh still a few bumps there and it just triggers a bit of it is purposing triggered or excited by the bumps see that yeah that's a man who's working with formula one engineers it's been excited by his ability as i said oh excited that's the terminology don't bring it on we need to learn this stuff you're you're our conduit to proper people who know proper things about racing cars instead of doofuses like me so the inter-europa car kubeschmikovsky just ahead of rui andrad and that algarve pro car james allen closing in from behind that's the black and blue car stewie cox running that team under their own banner and francois erio for ultimate is the next car behind them 92 in the pits this is the gt pro leader both ferraris are in as well and they per guidi and miguel molina they finally change those flat spotted tires or i think you might have to yeah they might just be doing a ride though i mean seven seconds ahead of the uh the corvette of nick tandy wants to look up by somebody just going into our rouge out of our side window right so scrub left and new right on the front and this is going around brendan iribe who doesn't know which way he's going and then meanders a little and again anthony every pro driver would say to anybody if you've got a quicker car coming up behind don't move offline stick to the racing line then we can all look at you big one and that's miro cannot cut we saw he'd spawn earlier on his exit have turned 13. this might be a safety car there's debri all over the road i think he's got on the gravel on the exit there and it spun the car around into the barrier on the left-hand side wouldn't be the first time we've seen that he's trying to get i'm not sure that's going to work but is it the drops of rain that's caught him out no gets on the gravel exactly as i thought no it's an uh yeah 10 13. conway just avoids it as the car ricochets back off of the barrier and bits flying off the rear end of that aurica he may have had contact with some of the debris but it looked as though the little cheese wedge just was missed by conway now you need to make a pass okay could be a safety car passing now passing now wipers on and around the outside of kubis mikowski goes the car android and james allen is waiting to pounce as well they're not far away from that yellow flag though and when you see the wipers when you see the wipers on the cars it really means the rain's coming down and they're starting to suffer as a safety car is deployed yeah they're starting when you see the usually the the wiper on it means that it's got to a level where you're starting to lose grip and it may sound silly but ben fiscal was clearly suited and booted ready to take the car over he will not now safety car will come in and antonio felix de costas 23 second lead will evaporate pitted but i think he pitted after we saw the safety car was called doesn't matter if the pit lane was not closed if the safety car had not been scrambled pit exit is still open if the pit lane entrance was not closed he's good you can get out before the safety car queue gets to him i'm sure he got hit by that piece of body work but it was on the side of the car but yeah you you're right martin luther they did the as long as you don't have the pit lane close light on you can come in and do your pit stop uh so they've mitigated some of the losses there of jota as the others will more than likely pit under the uh the safety car later on once the track is cleared and what else have they done safety car put roberto in yes exactly still dry drive car driver change right it is starting to rain however in the pit lane [Music] first hour of the total energy six hours of spa with a full house and a full grid ready to race on one of the world's great circuits among the great and the good the likes of roger penske watching his team in action we also have the head of the gm racing program laura wintrop hauser cows are who we will hear from later but as the race got underway it was for the first time ever an american team starting from pole position glickenhaus dominated in qualifying and olivier platt led the field away around the outside went the alpine ran out of room so too kevin ester outbreaking himself jimmy rooney tried to give him room and they made contact jimmy rooney then forced to pit with a puncture ferrari and corvette taking advantage porsche with the lead but losing one of their two cars and a major drama for them further back antonio felix de costa in the jota car up the inside intellect on lap one setting off as though he was a slightly outer position hyper car rather than lmp2 car iron dames in the gravel brought out the first safety car on lap one back to green flag racing plenty of action in the pack and the drive-through penalty would be awarded to the 98 aston for turning around gabriel aubrey's ferrari in the early action at the bus stop paul dalalana the man who earned himself that penalty good battles in lmp2 alessia rivera for a of course of the chromecast started on pole after a sensational blitzing lap to take it away from wrt in the death of qualifying and cars off everywhere trying to avoid slower traffic as they jockey for position and then eventually the hard work of sebastian buenley in the number two eight toyota reeled in at the clicking house to take the lead and within a lap the number seven toyota was going by as well mike conway knew that if the team wanted to win this race the number seven team that is they had to chase the number eight toyota down and he made a short work of that mira konopka with a spin at the end of the first hour more action in lmp2 the battle for second was a single-seater race sean galell temporarily losing second place and then big incident for miro kanoka hard hit to the barriers bringing out the safety car and now the red flag the race has been stopped and you sense that's for medical attention for miroslav konopka let's hope that he is okay so while we were running that highlights package we went safety car and then in very short order to the red flag there is the arc bratislava car of miroslav konopka the car still in the middle of the road and everybody else will head back to the grid and and davidson barely an hour in the race and aaron's seven minutes done and the red flags are out and normally that is the indication there is something that we need to attend to that can't just be done behind the safety car car is stranded in the middle of the track it's gonna need a lift anyway that's going to block the track anyway so i'm hoping that miroslav is out of the car haven't seen that on the camera right hand door was open oh yeah that's the wrong side well we will try what they're supposed to do uh whether they were in a critical fuel situation or not will remain to be seen we're about in the window for fuel for gta cars and it was gt am the cars predominantly i think that i saw ducking in corvette the 56 the 88 and the 85 iron domes car all on pit lane okay okay but again you can pit when the pit entry is closed if you can prove that you need fuel just saw that team manager arc bratislava there are the crew uh chris a quick shot of michaela yeah uh no mean race for herself raises your nascar plus michaela amongst other things that they will be worried about their boss we've heard about the boss yeah i'm just trying to work it out the angles that i saw the car going out and and knowing the corner myself in a lmp2 car it's it's it's a third gear corner um i'd i'd class it as a medium speed corner the tyre barrier does its job it did its job um it's just a very unfortunate incident we've seen it happen before cars going just losing the rear of the car over the curb or the gravel and it just spits the car around like we saw but um usually you should be able to walk away from that okay saw mike newton have a similar accident in an rml car and there we are yeah there he is well that's all we needed to know everything else is just tin and and bits of fiber so that's very good news indeed confirmed uh that there is barrier damage that is going to need repair it's a very short distance into that what is it it's barely two meters of grass so nothing slows you down there and that's a hard left hit into the barrier so that will absolutely i mean the very least will have knocked the wind out of his sails scar one of the two young dutch drivers that should be should have raced this car will get no chance for his wcw this weekend and that you couldn't have done this level of operation you know with just a safety car going around so the red flag is uh it was definitely the right thing to do it's more i think for the barrier repair at this stage the recovery of the car and for that by the recovery of bureau uh two uh matters but uh barrier damage has been confirmed by smith at wc they were definitely the way the car was right in the middle of the track there as you said there was no way i mean nowhere you got a flatbed but even with one of the lift and grab four-wheel drive vehicles you couldn't have done it without blocking the track really substantially so uh even at safety car pace that would have not been a safe option and again eduardo freitas as ever the only successful race for our race director is one that everybody who came to leaves in one piece beyond that everything else is negotiable but that is absolutely his remit everybody who comes here should leave safely and uh that's not just race drivers that's teams that's especially marshalls and everybody else yeah it's funny i had a good uh chat with eduardo the other day actually he showed me around race control and you know they they have a very comprehensive uh array of screens as you can imagine and gps data of all the cars and telemetry and um you know it's a very different mindset to that of a of a driver you know like you said martin he's made a successful day for him is that everyone leaves a track in one piece and um his main concern isn't like the speed of the cars and the lap times like the driver thinks obvious is safety so red flags out here at spa frankenstein we had just completed the first hour a little bit of rain coming down and the humidity the humidity is what's brought all of those millions of insects out to breed and that's why visibility is so hard moving away the car of arc bratislava louise is down in the team garage with ben viscal who was due to get in the car shortly ben fiscal the first thing we should say is that the driver is okay in the 44 which is the the main concern for everybody i can see it on the team's face yeah of course main main thing of course he's okay of course very disappointing result but you know again he's okay so that's the most important thing and for the team this is obviously not what they want but uh in terms of running this weekend how has it been so far we've had very little running from the beginning we had small technical issues you know on the brakes in the first three practices we managed to fix that for qualifying but we already had very little running so hence the qualifying position was not where we belong and yeah of course being out of the race in the in the first hour is very disappointing and for you new to wec so welcome it's a shame that we can't see you running but um you're in elms at the moment it's going great for you there so how is your sports car career going so far pretty good actually you know of course paul rico we finished second so we're second in the championship there of course this was the first race with erc and of course it's all about the preparation for le mans but of course you know this was a bit disappointing but in general i'm very happy about the progress we are making so far well i'm glad the drive is okay i'm glad that uh it's nice to speak to you and we look forward to seeing you in the le mans thank you thank you very much well bad news for ben fiscal bad news for the team good news though for miroslav konopka that uh he is out of the car and a-okay and uh rain coming down light rain as the red flags remain out here we are due to go back racing in 10 minutes or so and so the procedure to get things underway will begin most cars lining up on the grid a number made it into the pit lane uh under the safety car among whom was corvette racing because they were due to come in that was their inland fuel anyway so graham goodwin at that situation you can enter the pits even though they are nominally closed don't you know is when they can leave one quick uh point of interest before we get to a very important visitor in the in the uh right now and uh you'll have seen it on two or three of the shots what looks like snow it isn't we have got rain around the circuit but we've also got a fair degree of debris from the forest blooming at the moment it's not unique here we have had incidents where the amount of pole along the track has led to a slippery track has it but that's what you see when you see the kind of white debris blowing across the circuit and onto the cars it is the forest plug in the plane i was thinking that was insects that's why my eyes are streaming most morning and they weren't yesterday right okay there we go well i'm delighted to welcome another woman in motorsport but one to hold her position at the women remote sport is holding down to my knowledge at least four jobs she is responsible for the camaro gt4 program she is responsible as the boss racing gm racing and i said head of corvette racing that's a full-time job where on earth do you fit all the others in well it's a balancing act for sure uh very fortunate that i have the the privilege to build a team that's under me at gm supporting both corvette cadillac and the camaro gt4 and thank god because i found a way to you know hit the clone button and make sure there's more of us out there to work through things and uh i have some of the the best people by far working for me to do that so it's kind of a way to divide and conquer is to just get more on board i want you what a great bunch of programs you've got going as well you know we're thrilled to have corvette racing here for the first time in the world championship and the team coming back to spa for the first time corvette racing they raced here last year with the c8r they're coming back again now this is the first track that you've come back to in the world endurance championship has that made a little difference to how they're approaching the weekend to the team dynamic do you think oh absolutely we learned so much when we were here for the first time last year and you learn you know some things that work you learn things that don't work so addressing those uh first being able to use all the data that we took off of the car we do a lot of work preparing in the simulator but there's nothing that beats the real on track data that you pull from being at an event so all of that fed into you know what this weekend was going to look like for us for performance on track and then just as important is the performance off track how we have the garage set up how we come in and out and all the lessons we learned last year from that have also helped uh for getting ready for the entire wet season so our garage area is super organized now it's great all right let's catch up with our man who was our lmp2 leader louise beckett down in the jota mix i'm not sure where antonio felix decoster is but we'll hear from him now antonio you put in a great performance in the 38 joker but uh so it was all bunched back up again now yeah um we knew like the safety guy was going to come at some point the goal with me starting the race was just to get track position i think we've accomplished that a bit earlier in the stint than what i was expecting and now we got roberto in the car to do his time it's obviously we're on the red flag which it sucks a little bit for us in terms of strategy but obviously safety first so i hope everyone's okay with that crash it is what it is and we'll you know go from here you said you expected safety car um are there changes to the circuit making you more cautious or knowing that that is inevitably going to happen um i think obviously the the room for mistake is now smaller which in my opinion it's great i've been wanting to see tracks go a little bit more towards old school for ages and this is mega and we see everyone's actually behaving really well where the other car just crashed the track had no changes anyway so that's not because of track changes but we've seen no track limits issue nothing like that so for me this is a big step forward for this racetrack and now it's in the wet as well with all that new tarmac that's been laid down yeah the new tarmac is good grip so that's fine and and the range seemed to to come down a bit looks like it was a bit of an aggressive shower but super short um so we'll see i think it's coming again later and uh yeah we'll see what happens oh it's spa right exactly thank you yes it's spa right never a true word laura one shot powers the head of corvette racing uh wearing a black jacket with actually only two logos i mean you should just be like a walking billboard with all the programs you've got but that's all part of racing you know safety cars red flags wet weather here at spa that that's kind of everybody expecting that it's like expecting it to be hot at sebring pretty much and apparently expecting rain at sebring for the wet grace is a thing now too for sure i heard you get snow here oh we did that yeah yeah we did yeah not at le mans so uh that will be our next stop as the cars are now looking at heading away from the grid to resume racing so we're due to go racing again in four minutes the cars starting to be waved away and graham goodwin they're going to try and do a wave around here as well to give lap cars their lap back i don't recall overseeing a wave by from the red cla red flag stop before that's that's unusual it's nothing no reason why they shouldn't yeah but it is unusual i've got a quick question for laura i think it's the question that everybody wants to ask which is when are we going to see the capital we're all very excited great new era of sports car racing on the horizon it is delightful to hear that we're going to have cadillac not just in the insta weathertech sports car championship but also here in the fio world endurance championship i'm not very patient i know quite a lot the fans lack that basic patience and politeness that i know that the corporate world would like them to actually possess so when are we going to sing the real thing soon or we like the word soon um actually i just had the privilege of of hearing it run recently and uh i it's worth the wait i promise all right i'll definitely take that i'd definitely take that it's been a long while since we've had cadillac racing at le mans racing at all in europe so you know we've seen what you guys are doing in the insta weathertech series and we just want to see some of that over here as well so it's going to be good and again we talked a little bit about the c8r and again the customer racing program which obviously what gt3 is it's to allow you to allow others to race corvettes as well and that's all coming on is is that car running testing we are currently building the first test car it looks great cage is in it and everything so we're hoping to get that one on the ground here in the fall and it's funny the that car launches in 24 the cadillac lmdh launches in 23 so you would think that they would be about a year apart but no the way the homologation process works with gt3 and as we prepare for customers you had to look at the schedule differently than you do for what we're approaching with the cadillac so they're very close they're only a couple months off from each other uh in terms of when we had to get a car down for testing how much testing we have to do all that so it's been pretty exciting well you started your life at gm as a production engineer so you know all about those lead times and and and the gt3 it's not a factory race program it's a cut you've got to sell customer cars that work you can't let them do the development and that's why you need that lead time right absolutely the intent is to provide something that's plug and play ready to go and you know i i'm sure there'll always be that one little thing that you have to work through but as long as it's just a little thing that you're working together and you've got great customers and we have a lot of interest and a lot of really strong teams that have come and asked us to be a part of the program so we're we're very excited for getting into the the customer program and how we can grow corvette i bet there's a lot of hands up graham as well to run cadillacs there's a lot of people who've got a lot of good history with that i think we're coming into a fantastic period of time uh where it's not just the factory teams coming and when are we going to see these fantastic new cars both in lmdh lmh and for that matter in gt3 and gtd but also the level of customer interest is going to be right across the board we go to the toter let the mechanic can do it do the power cycle the mechanic do it in case i do it wrong but i don't think i do so calm down calm down we do have a problem we do have a problem calm down you think we may be able to drive oh that's not a good that's not a good phrase i mean i'm not an expert we think we might be able to drive that's not a growing the traditional there should be a t-shirt really shouldn't have been definitely but that's the other part coming back to that point is the level of interest in the customer marketplace for all of this new uh environment for sports car racing on both sides of the atlantic and that from the commercial point of view i'm sure is a question you're getting grips with right now you've plenty for gt3 got to build and sell a certain number of cars trouble trouble trouble for the number 8 car cannot get the car underway well now so what does so what does mike conway do because he's not allowed to pass and until i don't think he physically can until there is outward he's now selected reverse but until there's outside intervention to push buemi away and that must come soon coast now there we go oh fat that is a bullet dodged you could see him recycling as the lights came on and off that's control or deleting like his life depended on it and it does and now he's got the car going away keep it the question which is you you've got i'll doing to uh sell 20 of those gt3 cards laura's just pointing to the yellow dot at the end of pit lane she's seen the corvette moving in fact she hasn't that's not the corvette that's a porsche waiting but the corvette will move to join the tail of the safety car queue so i don't think they'll have a problem starting yeah fingers crossed go ahead graham the question is about the the homologation uh requirements for gt3 cars it's still 20 cars sold in two years yes first two years of your homologation without old off oh sorry off off the track it's very very wet by the way rouge that's again he's struggling isn't he um i'll ask the question quickly before putting me down he's off stop stop it stopped i was about to say before he did something else this is history with toyota they don't start properly they don't like to continue running now again because of the hybrid actually race control asked toyota to stop at the end of free practice up the kimmel straight to allow the marshals to have a hybrid alert practice i stopped stop stop and power cycle stop and power cycle stop and power cycle you can see in the garage the hybrid gloves going on big thing you can move yes so he's going to start from the back of the field here the quick question before something else dramatically happens we're gonna have to let you go because it's gonna be cut at this point laura can you tell us whether or not you're worried in any way about selling 20 of those corvette gt3s not at all there you go and that by the way was done without fear trepidation or indeed pause yes that's great deviation hesitation or repetition repetition laura ronchok it's been a delight to see you in the flesh at last thank you very much for coming up sears uh i know your first trip to le mans was a nice jolly family holiday with your husband this one will be maybe a little less light-hearted but i bet you're looking forward to it again for sure last year was the pizza the fire coming in having a job to do i'd like to think that maybe it'll be just a tick more familiar from that perspective oh trouble sorry oh my goodness all right so the 71 ferrari is off everybody on slicks i don't think anybody changed tires that's frank de zorto yeah the problem's driving the speed car and he's damaged the wing he's going to have to come into the pit lane we'll see that it doesn't look wet clearly it feels right look at the marshalls as well cover that's more damage that initially looked isn't it as well there's significant damage to the river that car yeah that is going to be pitting and it's going to be a while it is right he is not going to join the safety car queue and for the restart but remember no drama in insurance racing again it stopped again laura's coming during the red flag to have a nice 10 minute chat we've been interrupted about every third word but listen thank you so much for coming and talking to us thank you for bringing corvette to the world championship and uh looking forward to seeing cadillac do the same and we're gonna get interrupted again thank you laura it's been a pleasure stop the car and you need to exit the car now no contact ignition off main off ignition off main off and you need to jump out of the car without connecting between the car and the ground okay confirm yeah yeah you saw the jump dismount do not be touching the car and the ground and the alpine has gone off as well and the glickenhaus oh my lord right we were we were desperately trying to actually ascertain what was going on in the future when in the current cars are going off left right and center it looks doesn't quite work there doesn't look wet louise beckett in the pit lane yeah i was in the toyota garage for that restart when they were slightly worried you could see all the team and the faces worried when seb said he couldn't start then they were walking away again relieved because he got going again and then it all changed again they've cleared the garage they clearly know there's a serious problem with that car yeah well seb has jumped out of the car and the problem is now if there is a if there is even the consideration of an issue with the hybrid system he can't get back in you know these are the protocols that are in place to deal with this new technology and look watch you can't be touching the car and the ground because if there is a short in the car you will be the conduit to the ground and you will be a dead man these things have phenomenal power and that's the only way to get out and he knows that as well as everybody else in formulary does do not step out of the car either stay in or jump out and they've got all their hybrid emergency gear ready but and i mean look number seven they had that disaster pachito had at that enormous crash in sebring and suddenly the balance has swung 100 the other way number eight out of the way yeah he charged the dnf tyres going on the corvette so the rain keeps coming down and like you say graham that the the track doesn't really look from the outside as bad as it clearly is for the drivers on the track overlooking the pit lane it looks right i know louise is complaining it's spitting and spotting but it looks bone dry it's wet elsewhere i'm really very surprised about the bus stop yeah i've done it on a four and a half mile circuit you can have one end of the circuit being fully wet and the other dry but where me clearly disappointed livid in fact as he jumped out of the car and showing his frustration it's out of your hands isn't it it's not driver error and that gave a brilliant race frustration yeah he was driving a great uh double stint there and he knows he did nothing wrong but you said it right at the beginning i know when i'm going into an endurance race something is going to happen that's not in my control it doesn't make any easier to deal with whether it's your car or someone else's car or a circumstance like in someone else's crash that causes a safety car a red flag like we're seen he's shaking his head he cannot believe it was going so well and uh this is the moment where he was told that we knew there was a problem yeah they did they knew there's some something not right you know the controls when you're when you're driving inside and out and he must have known something was just unfamiliar listen he was on the radio saying get a mechanic to start it in case i've done it wrong but i don't think i have so clearly procedures he's pressing he's pressing all the buttons and conway i was watching it real time he had positioned the card trying to get around this is the moment obviously that he found out was a bit uh wetter than down on the on the start grid based on what had happened at the start and the fact that he was trying to control or delete it a lot and then immediately it died again is that actually driver error or is that just the electronics starting to die in the car yeah maybe i didn't have to wait and he was saying here don't touch the car if you touch the car and you're earth and you touch the car then we're all going uh somewhere we don't want to now now in world rallycross wrx where they've got the hybrids in formula e where they've got the hybrids they've got a very clear illumination system which is like stay away yeah and it's not that clear on these hybrids and that's something i think they need to address let's hear from mike conway and the team good enough for what for you is it enough for good tires no i mean the quickest part of the track away from there but yeah it's always good to for the for the team to tell the driver what the weather is likely to do next because they have the luxury of the radar but the driver relays the information off what actually the circuit feels like to drive and he he wasn't he sounded a little bit non-committal there looks some parts of the the slowest speed to the track are dry but the bits where i'm going to take the most risk are wet yeah the point i was going to make as we got back to the the race getting underway behind the safety car was not involving the hypercar or indeed the gt cars it's the lmp2s it's to point out another change this year which is there's no intermediate rubber for those cars correct they've got wets or they've got slicks and nothing in between so that could come into play if we get what we're expecting here which is this to go to dry conditions again well like gte you know there's no happy medium you are hell or high water and and you saw corvette go on to wets that's the survival that's survive the safety car mode and if we have to we'll come in again they had to come in slightly out of sync with everybody else they'll have to come in again but what they don't want is to pin their only car so sometimes you have to take the pain you have to swallow the poison pill to be there when we go green again so here are the guys who know what to do brembi is staying well away keeping his head i mean it's outside assist and so his pointless keeping his helmet on because he won't be able to get back in the car and rejoin the race he won't be allowed to rejoin but you know the guys that got all the protective equipment there and from my experience in that car it looks pretty terminal but i might be proved wrong that's why boymi's keeping his helmet on but you would it's the right thing to do as a driver just in case but now that team members have gone there to to touch the car the moment they start working on the car it's excluded excluded and the reason they are going there is to make sure that it is safe to be moved so there'll be a rubber mat underneath those two gentlemen right now and those those big gauntlets you saw them pulling on in the garage those are like very thick cowhide because it's you know it's insulated around 900 volts i i mean they're in that car the the the physics involved i i i gave up doing physics because i didn't really understand electrics when i was 12 and i haven't understood it much more in the intervening half century but the the pa the potential power involved is absolutely astonishing it's yeah i mean the energy density of the batteries isn't great compared to a fuel tank of of internal combustion fuel but their propensity for giving you a hell of a belt in the in the in the vernacular is absolutely that and again wrapped up in what carbon fiber yeah and which is what an amazing conductor it's one of the best conductors that you can get so um that's why we're told as drivers that to do the uh the hybrid safety jump and not touch the car as you get out so um now what i want to actually to see is drivers performing like a backflip or something off the side you know for a bit and you know a nice dismount but there's a little bit of style i should say by the way through all of that we've got a very different looking order to lead this race the number seven total becomes the third different leader of the 2022 six houses past from the shop prima orlan number nine lmp2 car in the hands of lorenzo colombo is in second position overall and sean gale those two having battled away before we went into well multiple incidents really for wrt is third overall then it's the alpine the 36 car got away from that instant size at the bus stop before uh the glickenhaus then it's the 22 united auto sports usa card willow in then the clicker now seven zero eight look at the pictures we're seeing here we're at lake com although right the toyota just twitched his eyes about say it is bone dry coming up the chemical straight from our route clouds of spray and that's a quarter of a mile half a mile maybe between absolutely soaking wet and pretty much bone dry it's just yeah it's very tricky conditions to uh to assess for the drivers there most of them committed on the uh the slick tyre but i can still see the rain coming down but the safety car is staying out and that makes life a little easier for those who are on a slick well the reason the number seven toyota car is leading and is the only hypercar in the top three is of course because we saw the glickenhaus and the alpine both go off at the bus stop in the rain as the safety car got underway well let's hear from wrt louise beckett is in the pit lane with van sanvos vincent foster looking on your team are ready for the 31 to come in with wet tyres do you think it is bad enough conditions out there to warrant that well obviously in spite most of the time a gambling but yeah we have one car on wet already and we get ready to change in case of is this pit stop scheduled yes it is okay thank you and although he gives a little smirk he would actually tell you straight up no we need to come in he's not a game player when he was a racing driver and as a team boss he tells it to you the way it is it is straight now there is blue sky overhead there is a light cloud it's quite dark looking out of our windows louise beckett is going to have a rain whinge louise no i'm not until i was looking at vincent saying why were you so quiet and as i was about to say it the team came out with a set of slicks as well all right well it does look as though the safety car is going to make slick tire gambles a safe thing but everybody's in are they in for fuel uh we can't see a pit entry light but if the pit ng is open it is it is open it's open now i have spotted by the way why it was that we saw the double spin from the click in the house and from the alpene and that's because it's streaming wet yeah and the wets are getting light up there for the number seven toyota until you get to the braking zone for the bus stop where it's bone dry and of course they've then got wet slick tires braking hard so that was a good move for the corvette by putting the wet tires on before they got going again under the safety car he'll be making up some uh some serious positions now as i see the callback coming past actually the conference window behind more than half the cars in the race are in the pit lane ferraris porsches critically uh the 92 porsche that was the race leader that's just pitted you just saw neither of the pro ferraris have come in so a of course it go up to one two uh in gte pro corvette [Music] 52 did everybody else hear that or was that somehow eduardo just talking to me uh i i heard it but it was another message i'm not sure that was necessarily for broadcast something rather the same as car 52 uh 52 af courser miguel molina well both both the ferraris remain out um 51 in 18th place is the leader in gt so gte suddenly has full i do need some new teeth falling into ferrari's lap yes and no with four hours to go four hours and 20 minutes here we now then do we know what tires the ferraris are on uh well i don't think they've pitted so i oh right louise becky you think the ferraris are on webs i'm not down there so i'm gonna get down there now but across the board so far it's wet i've seen all round even on that 31 wrt whatever vincent was saying well uh i'll turn luis off uh the ferraris haven't hit him so they have not come in for tires were they not allowed to change tires on the on the grid yes they were uh they did change tires on the grid okay well we saw little of that because we were actually trying to string a sentence together with laura at one job klauser from uh from gm racing so sorry to guys here on the now under pressure to move this car to a place of safety they're trying to do that safely um it's not helping said boymi's day his day's over anyway he's not helping his demeanor either you're right we do need a series of you know the um leave me alone i know what i'm doing yes we need a cow seb t-shirt series that's going on um what it is doing is allowing everybody in the safety car to burn time by which i mean when we saw jota changing off antonio felix to costa and putting in roberto gonzalez all the time they're sitting there on the grid all the time they're on the red flag all the time they're behind the safety car that's his name the time is still ticking yeah while the red flag is out the time is still ticking and it is now under the safety car so he's eating in to that driver time that all the teams running the silvers and the bronze bronzes are and the goals that are sorry silvers and the bronze they're trying to get rid of uh that time so it's it's beautiful for them and actually sean galileo uh who is still out there they just pitched and made the draft check so he's done he's done his silver drive time for wrt so they're they're winning from that one by the way we're 100 minutes in so and a new leader with the uh pit stops for the remaining hypercars ryan collins leads the race stop the count they say vector sport red flag the race no need to restart it we'll take victory thank you very much lmp2 cars are one two as you say ryan cullen for the new boys vector sport in their second race they're leading robin franz for wrt in seconds sebastian buemi finally abandons his car this is the view from the alpine of andrena growl let's see what he's got to say [Music] okay i go really really slowly because where i go where i am now is fully christ [Music] he says it's fully dry except in that on-board shot which i think was a little later than the actual radio message it was clearly there was rain on the windscreen and yo i mean you're right look there's no spray no sign of a wetland dry line and and for three quarters maybe maybe seven eighths of the racetrack question is stone dry is red and falling it's still falling in certain parts of the the track we can see clearly there well i don't know i'm looking at his umbrella i wouldn't say there's a lot of rain coming down that might be the odd spit and spot seven by the way did take wets we're told by total seven is on where we saw them going on um at the time but uh look the wet tires are not gonna like these conditions it's not wet enough for wet as well here it is starting yeah you can see the rain coming down on the screen so it is starting it was predicted rain level two intensity two to three yeah at 2 45. it's just uh yeah it's just 245 now and there it is that's the only car that's on the right tire is the safety car that is going to survive these conditions and and still be fine everybody i mean look at this again from bone dry you're just driving into i mean we've all done this on on you know driving our normal road cars you're driving along dry dry dry dryers and again straight out the other side i mean that's what showers do and just for clarity about just how bizarre this place can be of course we checked the weather forecast before we left this morning and the weather forecast this morning said very clearly 25 chance of rain one millimeter between the last three hours of the race well this is not one millimeter and it most certainly isn't the last few hours of the race well spread over the entire track it's much much less than one millimeter it's just localized it's a bit more than one minute that uh not marina marina might start filling up quite soon louise beckett is sheltering in the garages i can tell you that the 51 af courser is ready to come in they've got a set of wets ready so i'm intrigued to see what's on that car right now all right still in the garage i should see just come in so i they didn't change so they didn't change in the pit lane maybe they didn't change either car on the grid this is good corvette i thought we saw a message that said they could they they do in formula one because well that's rubbish but i don't think they're allowed to hear i think if you don't come into if you don't give up track position you shouldn't be allowed to have an advantage by changing tires i'm i'm all for that yeah me too i don't know where you can change to change tires or any component on your car under a red flag for me it's time out i don't think you can i think when you're on the red flag when you're on the grid i think that's park furby essentially you can't change drivers you can get out you can have a wii you can have a sample only limited personnel are allowed to touch the car actually on the grid and they finally get that toyota safe rolling off it's not that it wouldn't move it's just that they have to be safe now to touch yeah that's exactly and you can see the recovery guys there you know the first guy that came out was not dressed for the weather oh hello hey look they're all right yeah but look at the rain is that worse is that where is going now just to get rid of the frustration i've seen him like that i thought i'd seen it i'm going back to raise control messages and at one hour and 14 minutes under the red tire change on the grid was allowed and we did see tire changes so not everybody took that opportunity the rain is tipping down now that will have been i am absolutely sure because the heavier rain happened at that point not completely that yeah so but clearly several of those teams didn't take that opportunity have we just seen i think as you offered off mike uh corvette racing put an absolute blinder here i think they did um they obviously lost out from whatever happened strategy wise uh before the red flag i think did they pit before others perhaps before i think they pitted after the others i think they went longer they're still tandy behind the wheel yes he started the race uh but yeah i think i think they they they waited a long time didn't they grow up or i don't understand why we saw three car here's the thing we saw three cars leave the pit lane um where the safety car pulled away two of those three cars plus another car with a remarkably similar number uh 46 not 45 which has been caught by race control to be under investigation are under investigation for a safety car procedural uh issue the 64 remains stationary and only then then move did they did they put the target i think they did i think they did the right thing strategy wise and procedural wise as well and that's still their only pit stop corvette that's their only stop you can see a wave by happening or a pass by happening raise control has said to the driver of that number 45 car if you can't pick up the pace let the others go by so that's stephen thomas uh car 51 reported to the stewards for not respecting safety car procedures so came in and the not respecting safety car procedures will be he came in and filled the tank under the safety car you can come in if the pit lane is closed but there is a limited amount of fuel you can take is pit lane closed at the moment it was well it may not be when he came in now did he leave under a red light did he leave [Music] that that would be very clear no that's right that can't be possible 52 by the way did not stop miguel molina did not stop uh michael christensen is second the 51a of course of ferrari is third corvette's nick tandy is only fourth in am but he has only made one pit stop miguel molina has only made one pit stop so if they did change tires on molina's car it was on the grid well what a bizarre track this is i'm looking out to the window here i can see all the way up to last source from the start finish line it's bone dry and yet there are other places where the cameras can barely see a car and you know and that's you know we had we've had two beautiful days of sunshine beautiful weather this morning for all three support races and this is spa being spa this is exactly what you anticipate it doesn't always happen but you know that the potential for this to happen in this little mountainous region is absolutely always there whether you come here in march or july or october it doesn't matter the weather here in spa can always do this to you 92 coming back out 91 coming back out that's jimmy brown delayed jimmy rooney car remember from the start i was looking at the end of the pit lane and the green light is on so i think they've done everything right so what we've got um on screen at the moment is rain level three to four that is significant rain uh until 15 10 in sectors two and three and that's the worst part of this look at this yeah that's what we're looking at now we can range on this circuit it's immense i think for the first time now we're getting reasonable rain actually on these on the uh on the pit lane yeah for the first time that has been pretty much bone dry so we've got this by the look of it for a further 20 minutes this is erasable no this will be under the safety car until this intensity of rain disperses but i was just going to say that the the the spray on this track oh the car in front of us let's let's hear from louise beckett in the pit lane well i was just about to go to christine retired olivier platt has stayed aboard mike conway andre de graal antonio phoenix de costa did hand over the car to roberta gonzales and this is a good point in the race for that to be the case that's fallen back if you like into chota's hands because a lot of the pro drivers absolutely board the uh lmp2 cars roberto gonzalez has done nearly an hour in the car now because it wasn't long after hour one when we got the red flag and by that time he was already in the car indeed um sean gillel still aboard will owens still aboard the winds of colombo still aboard franz marparodo is very deep into his first stench mano collard has been aboard the penske car so neither of the uh gold platinum rank drivers for penske have yet been aboard that car josh pearson has been aboard from the start ryan cullen sharma lazy that's less good news for the number one car well ryan cullen has and this is what a safety guard does for you has gone from the lead and pitted and is now last in lmp2 the car is now 14th they made a driver change nico muller is now in vector sports car but you know it's dropped to the back of the queue and and there's because you can do it now i'm watching now the the pit lane light at the end is red yeah so if you come in now like i've just seen i think one of the uh the porsche car 88 coming into the pits they'll have to wait until the whole field has passed uh around term one for the green light to come back on then they can go again so i still don't know what happened to that car 51 no that's can't believe he would have jumped through a red light that's nick lloyd weiler stopping from second in ellen in gta yam so by the way again stop the count uh as far as gtam is concerned because there of course is christoph ulrich is leading the race i think that might be the first time christoph ulrich has led a wec race he made his debut in sebring and he is currently leading from paul daralana and francesco castellatchi reads in fourth place and some parts of this circuit are wet and some parts you're looking behind the safety car at the p2 cars almost aquaplaning off it is very very wet that's the 46 car heading out underneath us and going out through the green light it's only red as the safety car comes out of the final corner and until the train of safety car uh cars go by and that shouldn't have been the case with 51 because it came in from the train and it did a full service pit stop which is certainly not a lap that's uh safety car speeds there's a happy man yeah in a happy place with his camera and his umbrella and enjoy life is good and still in shirt sleeves it tells you that it's still a warm day so this will dry relatively quickly but i mean look at it now i mean they are they're not just leaving tracks on the road there's actually a bow wave behind these cars this is deep standing water and not just that little puddle by the curb but there's lots of it to the track where it is a very deep standing water it's in these kind of conditions when inside the car you're hoping that your heated windscreen doesn't fail because then it starts to mist up i've been there before where uh it you're not just battling the spray and the uh and the dodgy conditions trying to keep your car pointing in the right direction you they can't see i think we've all been there in our road cars when that happens i mean you do have ac in the lmp2 cars at least and some some of the hyper cars i don't think the toyotas do yes look at how wet it is in pift path alard calf at home feeling very smug messaged me earlier saying there's no such thing as light rain in spa when i said the rain was only very light just mentioned me saying i told you yeah very good yeah yeah yeah yeah we know that but yeah this is i mean this is unsurvivable and this means the safety car is now although it's redundant for for moving the number eight toyota it's not redundant now it is exactly required for safety because these cars there's not enough temperature in the tires there's not enough speed to build temperature in the tires and there's just not enough grip and if anything fast enough to build temperature in the tire so it's it's a vicious spiral eduardo is going okay we can't just keep running around behind the safety car we will have to stop this and wait for the water to dissipate a bit and part of what happens anybody who watches social media will have seen last year some really severe flash flooding at spa water runs we're in the valley we're in part of a valley and water runs down the hillsides and uh there look they're all nice and dry there's not an umbrella up because they're under the enormous ground keep pulling back keep pulling back show everybody how big this grandstand is this is going to be for the fans a fantastic it is a fantastic edition keep coming that's the rudyard grandstand there's nothing he's got yes he's ready yeah below the bottom level of this by the way is a whole floor of hospitality suites and those are going to be look go further down further down you see the glass windows there you go there's an impressive look at that voluminous crowd here and the pit the pit straight as well is completely full on the ground so i mean everyone's trying to take as much cover as they can but that's an impressive side i mean beautiful scenes because we've really missed that um racing all around the world yeah they don't care at all there you go next year if you're dressed appropriately for the weather there's no such thing as bad weather yeah there's no bad weather it's only bad clothing although i would argue oh hello did you not get the message about red flags coming through the bus stop there at rather a higher speed than i might have thought would be sensible you know it's it they're red flag guys red flag red flag i'm just going to wail through the bus stop at 80 k's what's going to be in front of you on the grid yes come on everybody just join the dots anyway no in the end no drama but okay we are now at nearly the two hour mark in the total energy six hours of spa from cashol with our second red flag spa franchise resplendent in all its glory and bright warm sunshine as the cars formed up on the grid 37 teams drivers and crew all waiting to get round two of the fia world endurance championship underway with a bumper crowd in attendance plenty to keep them occupied and the anticipation of a great race with wing foot overhead as they got away the paul man olivier platt leading the first time ever an american team has taken an outright pole position in the world endurance championship the alpine of andre de graal got pinched on the exit of turn one and a big mistake by kevin ester would cost porsche dear both cars making contact ferrari nearly coming through to take the lead jimmy bruni in the 91 picking up a puncher shedding a tyre and bits of its wheel as he then had to crawl back to the pit lane and lose a lap on lap one as the toyotas got ahead of the alpine and took the battle immediately from the start to glickenhaus it was clear that clicking houses hopes of running away and hiding from the more fuel efficient toyotas were not going to be uh living to that dream little mistake early on put the iron dame's car in the gravel they rejoined paul dalalana got a penalty for turning around gabriel aubry's am class ferrari and then the moment that olivier platt knew would probably come the number eight toyota of sebastian buemi making its way past at the top of the hill by the new marina there at lake home and where he went so too mike conway knew he had to follow outside inside at the bus stop it doesn't often work and really olivier plow was not compliant until he knew the game was up battle the second in lmp2 prema whizzing by wrt after a near-hour-long stint-long battle between the two of them four-second spot behind lmp2 leader antonio felix de costa then miroslav kanopka having a big shunt right after the first hour and bringing out the red flags for recovery rain which had been spotty up until that stage then arrived and as they restarted sebastian bueny's car died and there were more problems with the wet weather 71 ferrari looping around rain continued to fall and everybody who was on wet weather tyres hoping that the rain would come and save the rubber but it has come and it has come in absolute steroids the track is flooded and it is looking like it is not going to get much drier probably for another 15 or 20 minutes and then we will need to wait for the rain to go and the water to go from the track as well as a result race director eduardo freitas has had no option but to red flag the race for a second time well the fans in the grand stand hoping for a little more action in the remaining four hours than they've had in the second hour where we have had effectively a bit of follow my leader behind the safety car and quite a lot of rain martin haven graham goodwin and anthony davidson in the commentary box guiding you through this race and down in the pit lane louise beckett louise beckett is down in the prema power team garage robert kubitsa is in the car and that means the driver we saw making those ambitious passes lorenzo colombo is with our louise big smiles for lorenzo colombo as you were watching those highlights because that was an incredible battle you had and some incredible driving by you yeah so i took the start of the race i made it safe and easy around turn one because uh you know there is a gravel outside now with the new track changes and you don't want to destroy your race in the first corner so yeah after that i managed to keep b4 until the end of my stint i had a good couple overtakes to fight back up to b2 and then suddenly it was very when everything went smooth uh from my point of view i was managing tires and fuel with the team that gave me good advices during my stints and yeah then i saw some rain few drops of rain coming on track and uh yeah first time that i see rain in this uh with slicks and enron's racing is quite hard but i kept my head down and uh until the red flag and then we made the decision to let the robber jump in i took the restart of the first red flag but then there was no restart at all we stayed behind safety car for many laps because conditions were tricky and then i we boxed and let robert jump in you know safely we were p1 at the moment but then wrt car changed the tires on the red flag period so they jumped ahead of us so we are currently p2 and now let's see what's going on because it's going to be a tricky race regarding the weather well that was my next question you must be pleased you're not in the car in these conditions okay it's red flag at the moment but it's going to be difficult out there yeah i would say that at this point of the race when i saw the rain amount coming more on them more and more increasing we we suggested and the team suggested to let robert in the car with more experience so now i would see when we restart i will took i will take a lot of analysis and watch what he does to learn from the next experience the next races to become stronger thank you thank you very much well a wise head on some very young shoulders just hit off mike to ann davidson if a 12 year old can understand that about the first quarter then what was kevin s doing in that portion i'll tell you what yeah very impressive interview there yeah lorenzo colombo let's say a wise head there um which kept him out of trouble in term one he knew the consequences of running wide and you don't want to go ruining your race right at the start of a six-hour endurance race where we have changeable weather around and it did come to that so yeah really eloquently spoken and and he's his assessment of his time behind the wheel and his day is i'm very impressed with that that was a great start to an engineering debrief wasn't it it was brilliant from start from from from pre-grid to where he handed the car over and where we are now maybe he's just trying to save him himself time for later on after the race he wants to get home early and he's just going to replay that to his engineers so what did you think about yours just one quick point we're looking here at the number 52 car that sits at the head of the train on the um start finish straight won't be waved by because it's leading its class if things will they allow them to change tires on this grid again well i don't know because he's still on slicks well if others did it before then i'm sure that was the point when it started when it started raining they've had a chance to do it yeah i'm not sure i'm not sure because if they do allow them to change that's a huge advantage of that 52 car it's not well somebody's got to come in for fuel but one pit stop they're going to be in the window pretty soon he hasn't stopped for over an hour now they haven't been running for the whole time louise beckett though there must be somebody on pit lane getting ready for fuel stops soon well i was just speaking to the 52 crew and finding out they are on wets they changed during that first red flag okay all right so he is on the right tire which is how he survived frankly because you know when they went away behind the safety car it was wet since they've been behind the safety car it has become more like oxford cambridge but hello is it not me i wasn't on my phone it's been more oxford cambridge boat race material wave by means you get if you're a lap down on your class leader you get that lap back correct which means that uh he currently does have a lap lead on all the remaining gt e pro cars uh so michael christensen alessandra pier greedy and nick tandy are all going to be waived by and will rejoin the train and jimmy brown and jimmy bruni who was further left so he'll reduce his gap race will be resumed at 15 20 and we will follow the red flag procedures to resume the race as per the regulations please check if your cards are eligible for the pass around which which mean that's that's that's fairly straightforward team managers when your driver gets the wave around make sure he's aware what an earth is going on and that he is supposed to pass the safety car so make sure that he knows doesn't matter that i know in race control doesn't matter that you know on the pit lane make sure the nut loose behind the wheel is also aware if i get that right the only two classes that should affect will be the two gt classes yeah uh there are no uh still running lmp2s a lap down there are no hyper cars they're still running up down i know what that is that's what we call a pit stop time it's prague legging it round the corner to find somewhere to go well in all seriousness no you you hydrate for the job you're about to do yes and then when you have a red flag or very cold conditions you're going around lap after that behind the safety car you're you're not sweating you're not sweating it out so suddenly you become basically well hydrated or too hydrated for the situation and uh off he goes to the ladies it's either that or you go to the nelson pk route and nobody needs that no one's gonna thank you for that [Laughter] well no you want to get rid of the weight keep the weight in the car it's come on it's all about performance staying comfortable here so as things stand the wrt with robin frank's leads the race on the red flag then it's this car the 36 car of andre nicaragua the seven toyota with mike conway will restart the race in third place then the frame were all in number nine in a p2 car then the glickenhaus that's the top five in running order as they stopped right however yes that's not the order they are in the queue behind the safety card well if you want to know what happened to the number eight toyota think you're about to find out sebastian when we heard your your frustrations we saw them as well and understandably so talk us through what was happening in the car at that red flag on the grid yes we still don't really know i tried to restart the car as usual but the car had a hybrid issue so yeah we have a procedure obviously to power cycle the car so to shut it down completely and then restart but that didn't work so then as you can imagine you know the the five minute board the three minute board then you get a bit stressed on what you what else you could do because you feel like okay i'm not yet out of the race but then obviously that that problem was always there even with the power cycle so then i was still able to to drive but then i had a the problem of the hybrid was worse so at some point they told me to stop and jump out of the car because the car was red which means it was it was dangerous so the team have been looking at the car it's not back yet obviously have you got any feedback do they know anything no i think it's a problem with the hybrid system it's a pretty pretty serious one that's why nobody was allowed to touch it and i had to jump out of the car um so yeah yeah obviously investigating it and we will see what happens we saw that actually as you jumped out of the car you were saying to all the marshals don't come near the car i saw that you're doing that just wanted to make sure they knew that they shouldn't touch the car you know because when it's red obviously it's possible that nothing happens but there is a big risk of something wrong so i just wanted them to know thank you thank you you know it's it's still new technology isn't it it's new to the viewers it's new to the commentators it's new to the engineers and it's especially new to the track workers to the marshals you know nobody's a hundred percent don't approach the car don't approach the car exactly just to explain martin why we've not got the cars in the uh the actual race order on the grid we'll do that just after we go and listen to what's going on inside the number 64 corvette with nick tandy you and the ferrari are about three cars ahead of the overall leader so when we basically four minutes before they release us you guys will get a wave around to the tail end of the field that will basically put the ferrari a lamp up on everyone and we'll be still right in position to hopefully unlap ourselves to him so um yeah so staying out was a good thing but it's still going to be pretty messy from here yeah uh also by the way your wheel arch liner is falling off so when you start driving now you're right graeme you're shaking your head and shaking his head i don't think that's correct i understand that because they're ahead of the overall leader they should be wave rounds to the tail of the queue but the lapped cars in gte pro should also get a wave by so it should be a double wave buy whether or not there is a regulation to allow a double wave buy to allow the lapped cars because only because only one ferrari is on the lead lap in gte pro or not what i'm trying to work out here is it's nick has shown us four minutes and 42 seconds behind our sound repair agreed that would have been a safety car lap all of the other gt cars but i think i think the engineer there was talking about the 51 car not the 52k i think you're right yes third and 52 is fourth and that is it the 51 car that yeah sat behind uh that 52 is to the front of the queue so just to explain why there's a gte card in front of the queue that's because under the safety car we had the vector sport car was leading the race they then pitted yeah um they there was no wave buy under the safety car pretty clearly so the car that's then directly behind the safety car is the next car wrong with red flag that was the 52 car the race is then red flagged that's therefore the car directly on the safety and they wouldn't have done sorry to bust in they wouldn't have done a wave around under safety car conditions because the conditions were too dangerous to go any faster than the safety car exactly right the radar is showing that that big rain cluster is moving away let's hear from another of our teams [Music] i don't know if he's damaged or not that was really really general with the tires but you know we drive a little bit on the completely dry i don't think he's damaged but if we can change it's better okay copy we can again change and again asking the driver if he thinks the tire's okay it's a bit rubbish there are mechanics on the grid and they've got eyeballs the drivers in the car look at the blue and tires i'll tell you what though this this this is a tricky situation because i get being allowed to change from slick to wets for safety reasons why should you therefore be allowed to change a maybe slightly not quite as good wet tyre to a brand new wet tire that for me is a huge performance game and i'm not sure that's exactly what eduardo kratos means when he says you can change to a wet tire well now this is interesting it's all you know all bets are off change whatever you want wherever it looks but again you know then there's no disadvantage for staying out they've brought those tyres back yeah well are they the old tyres going back and are new tires with sharp shoulders going on i don't know it's a little hard to tell uh one further uh just uh expansion eduardo freitas we heard saying race will restart at 15 20. that's now slightly delayed to 1525 which gives us by the way an opportunity for another guest in the booth so we're going to have a bit of a chat about one of the other new technologies coming the way of the fi world endurance championship delighted to be joined in the booth by total energies roman aubrey uh roman tell us total energy is the new uh look for what people might have remembered as total field total energy is because of course the huge differences in the way that energy is being produced and managed around the world and marketed around the world you brought new technology here to the world insurance championship for the very first time with this 100 renewable fuel and it is quite an extraordinary story about how you're doing that i'm more to the point with what you're doing that but the product you're using for that tell us a little bit more about total excellium racing 100 correct exactly yeah the external racing 100 yeah so that's the second race for the work that we introduced on refuel and we are more than happy and proud to have introduced this field this season 100 sustainable renewable fuel only made from biomass which means we are not using any drops of oil we're using residue from the grape industry from the wine industry and some agriculture waste so we yeah all the the material we're using all the biomass we're using is not dedicated to uh human or animal feeds so that the key point here with that not only is it 100 renewable it's not a base product that could be used for food it's effectively it's the after product yeah food or drink exactly that's the byproducts from the grape industry for example you you get all the juice where you can do some wine and we we keep the residue the mars and the leaves which we can call it and from from this residue uh we doing a new fermentation to produce ethanol and we try to understand all the more purest as we can and from this ethanol base then we do a process called etg meaning ethanol to gasoline and then we dehydrate the ethanol compound to a hydrocarbon-based fuel okay now we united a conversation at paul record about this one i'd put to you a couple of things that i've read and that's i've had spoken spoken to me by various people around and i had a misconception about this because the conception leading up to the introduction of this fuel was that this feel was of lesser calorific value in other words you would need more volume to produce the same power and therefore because these are volume restricted the stents would be less but that's not the case no that's not the case exactly if we if we maintain the ethanol compound into the fuel yeah we will have a decrease of the the calorific value of the fuel and will have any other impact to the material compatibility for example so we've decided to maintain the same technology use the last season which means steel based on hydrocarbons and that's why we remove the oxygen atom from the compound to our hydrocarbon pure into carbons the world is changing in a variety of ways remarkably quickly the automotive industry and the energy industries are having to be very fleet of foot we're going to pause for just a moment let's listen what's going on with the number 91 porsche jimmy bruni you can lower the and you can lower the pressure on the center they're going because they were before when i started they were already 155 without pushing so you take a lower pressure that's jimmy really just telling the porsche engineers about tire pressures for the start the race feedback from the last time we tried to get the race back running under uh safety car conditions for the previous red flag but is this thing now about having to be fleet of foot reacting not only to market demand but also to governmental and for that matter global demand how tough is it to be in the industry right now with the demands that are coming your way my health that was increasing and we see with the pandemic period we just passed oh we're still in yeah it just increased the speed we need to to do it to execute our different project introducing this fuel we already have it mine in the last season but we are waiting to see how we can have our time with the manufacturer dfi and so to introduce this kind of fuel and this kind of technology and rupture but the pandemic increase the speed we need to do it and the people our people mind are taking care of everything around us and that's why we we've decided to move clearly to to the 2022 season when we started the discussion that was last june so that was not that far we are though in effectively 100 mile an hour laboratory here this is an environment that allows total energies to show off this future product because it's not a product yet available for public consumption it could be it could be completely transparent but what it does do is allow you to take the results from what you're seeing in a real world a real real world with major pressures on that product and take away those results uh under an environment as we get cars rolling at the moment behind the safety car again this will be the wave buy i think first to learn things about this product that will serve your future public customers greatly it really is another example of motorsports providing you with something laboratory can't exactly exactly under runs all the championship is is completely a bench test is a way to try new technology uh try new things in the way we are formulating the products in the way we are developing it and what we want to do and that's that's the perfect case we've seen in more less than a little bit less than 18 months how we've come from an idea in a laboratory to something directly on the track and approved by the manufacturer to give our viewers and listeners an opportunity to judge that with an equivalent changing technology in the past that 18 months sounds to me remarkably quick yeah yeah that was very fast and and i'm sure if all the engineers that have worked on this project you our in our research center and they would say they won't they won't do it twice [Laughter] tell us a little bit about the spirit within the organization the level of interest in what's actually happening here this afternoon what happened in sebring what happened at paul rickard where the fuel is also in use for the european lebanon series how much interest in the company are the guys and the girls at total energies taking in what we're seeing today well we we've seen that the company is moving to new mobility we've seen that we want to move from oil field to electricity electric mobility to hydrogen and biofuel is part of the the philosophy we want to have today for the company and having this kind of fuel on track is a perfect example we've got one other big total energies uh program in aco worlds racing and we're hoping to hear some more news about the h24 program in the coming days as to whether or not we'll see that car racing but the hydrogen fuel cell uh at imola maybe beyond that other le mans 24 hours that's proper cutting edge technology yeah and the clinic what we know is it's not to do with the fueling one minute to resume behind the safety car engine started please clear the grid immediately one minute to resume behind the safety car start your engines and please clear the grid immediately that's a lot of rate is just 60 seconds to go so we complete it with this with the fuel cell technology the technology is maturing your filling process the the mobile filling process genius solution to that that the fuel station travels with the race car if you like 30 seconds under 30 seconds to do to resume behind the safety car and there's 30 seconds to resume behind the safety car the question i guess is clear the grid immediately please clear the grid immediately please grid now cars may follow the safety car to leave the grid now so safety car is underway so we'll complete it with this the current difficulties to get that car racing are as i understand it it's nothing to do with the fueling process or filling process it's nothing to do with the technology there's nothing to do with the capabilities of the car it is just another step change in terms of making sure the whole package is safe and we're almost at the end of that range yeah exactly yeah some of the latest communication tests have been made this week and we still have a new discussion with the faa we're waiting for the green flag uh we will have the car on track next week for the elms events in italy and we keep we still keep our feelings that the car will be able to fight during the road to the mount races in a month yeah fantastic well for now as we've got this race back underway the streaming rain i'm afraid still here um keep an eye on this technology it is going to be ever more relevant not just here in the fy1 and george championship but for all of us around the world so that's the cars gets underway for now congratulations a new technology more renewable fuels in a very public venue uh thanks very much to revolution thank you very much thanks so back uh underway now behind the safety car uh still streaming wet i think we're to be hiding behind this safety goal for a little wee while yet um as the camaros get underway inside the wrt carriage what do you think so we've seen the wave around um the corvette and the ferrari number 52 who maintains that lap advantage on the corvette waved around and rejoin the back of the queue because they were in front of the wrt of robin friends who's the leader of the race in his lmp2 car ahead of the alpine of uh andre nagrao that's still on board and mike conway as well of course in the number seven toyota so yeah i'm just trying to wrap my brains as to how the 52 af courser with molina at the wheel managed to get a lap a whole lap ahead of nick tandy in the corvette i think that was in that for dick tandy that was definitely the the uh the pit stop the long pit stop and they must have changed with without paying with andre the crowd i think if the safety car is gonna be staying here for a while because you have a lot of water in the truck okay again so maybe okay so here we have a fuel to stay the answer is that the the the two cars following molina both pitted twice and then nick tandy had that long stop so that's what's lost at the time they the the 52 ferrari has only stopped once he only had a long stop because he came in behind the safety car because they were mandated for they had to come in before they were on their lap when the safety car came out and he was held at the pit exit so that was why that stop was long it wasn't a bad stop and actually anthony to be allowed to change tires on the grid i'm afraid that's wrong and to be allowed to put new tyres on again on the grid that's even wronger than wrong i mean you know they do it in formula one but i i don't agree that if you have to have wet tires you should be coming into the pits or be forced to come in afterwards if it's a safety issue red lights on rain lights on feature on and ac answers yeah heater rain and just about to finish my mouth we're trying to grab some lunch um roberto gonzalez we said great time for jota just as the safety car was coming out or just as rain started ages ago the first red flags put him in because all that time counted well all that time counts for everybody it was eating into the minimum driver time that he needs to do we're two hours and 28 minutes into the race all of that whether they were running at speed or stationary or parked for drilling their thumbs counts on driver time what's the maximum driver time and who is close to that are we now going to see drivers forced to pit in the next 10 or 15 minutes to avoid going over their maximum driving time well that we're going to get a recalculated driving time uh matrix i'm sure that we always do in these circumstances um i thought that was only if the race was shorter two quick two quick points here uh first is that car 83 are going to be in trouble they've reported to the students for having a non-authorized assistance i'm guessing that is uh assistance from a crew member of course that was not allocated to that car so the air of course a car that was on pole position and with uh francois piroto at the wheel now or not with the correct armor and on to the other point is i think the point you're making please elaborate if i'm right or i'm wrong is where you are concerned about their ability or the opportunity to change tires on the grid i'll sorry on the under red flag is to change one set of wet weather tyres for another set of wet weather tires yeah just renewing your tires i mean that's that's a freak performance advantage which one is for safety one is for performance correct and that for me it's very clear-cut the difference and actually i'm i'm not sure i mean again i think that cars on the grid uh under red flag park fermi you can get out and have a wii same driver goes back in nothing should be changed on the cup nothing if it becomes a safety issue like we did going from dry to wet and cars are on slicks okay allow them to change on the grid on the understanding that as they come around at the end of the safety card the first lap they go and do a drive through or a stop and hold or something to make up for the time that they have gained by having a free tire change compared to say against corvette who came into the pit lane and spent time racing time changing their tires and coming through the pit lane so you can't have that advantage and then when it stops again you can't just put fresh sweat tyres on what happens i'll i'll put a new wing on over higher downforce rear end no no you shouldn't be allowed to do that [Music] rant over left there's barely room for one more round i don't think i've got time for a sandwich uh let's hear from luis beckett so just spoken to the 83 af courser crew and what happened was on the grid there seemed to be a problem with the penske car which was ahead of francois parado so the marshal said you can push your car back slightly so you'll be able to get round and that's where this issue is but as the team have said the marshals told them they could do it thank you very much indeed for that louise before we get back to green flag ronnie they says it as they go by the green flag running we'll keep it and i'm gonna ask you young lady to pronounce your name because i'm about to insult you by trying so this is you're one of the trackside support engineers for total energies so tell us a little bit about what it is you do before the teams and with the teams and if anything dramatic happens here i'll interrupt [Music] yeah so i'm responsible for the fuel analysis after the race and the quality qualifying sessions so the goal is to control if all the teams are using the real fuel and that's presumably a management issue for both you and for the teams throughout before during and immediately after a race event exactly so we have a trackside analyzer that we all the transported so we're it's a mobile laboratory for us and we are always available for the teams to help them if they have questions about the fuel and we can control at the end of the race and the qualifying and tell us what is the level of accuracy we see from the teams highly professional all of them this is a world championship level event uh what what would count as a problem in your day if i found the team that hasn't used the proper fuel for sure now we've had with all examples in the past i could recall one of the european amontu is where a team had been testing with a different fuel had left some residue in the tank as a result but it's very rare it's very rare and that's why actually when the teams are racing with the difficult floor before uh we're always available so they can bring us fuel samples before the event and we can help them to and make sure that they have the right fuel and detect all the traces and so help them to the procedure to clean up the tanks and avoid any contamination big battle on the way here as we carry on talking about this with amber underground fending off mike conway and the raid does seem to be getting heavy at lew's telling us on pit lane here modern production process in all sorts of ways do tend to do they not bring more consistency and production if there's a problem it it's unlikely to be in the production level yeah it's really unlikely because actually we deliver all the fuel in the drum so we have a very strict procedure for our conformity i see a change here up the inside neat and tidy gave him room to do that is the cut back going to be available here front of the crowd not the ponies i'm afraid and not deploying hybrid there because it's nowhere near quick enough uh to do that but away goes mike conway now threw it into second position 5.8 seconds though behind robin franz [Music] so tell us a little bit about the feedback you're getting from the teams two we're two events in in the world endurance championship with a very new fuel what are the kind of questions they've been asking what are the kind of issues if any they've been finding i think all the teams are quite curious about the fuel because it's something completely different but we are usually having a very good feedback about it so they are most curious and uh asking us questions about how it's been producted and uh yeah about the composition a bit if it's different really different from every i confirm a usual fuel and is there anything they need to do differently in terms of handling transporting the fuel not really and what about the smell i mean i can remember a very early bio fuel that was used 20 years ago smelt uh described to me correctly as a very strong cherry brandy no this one it smells like a normal gasoline you cannot make the difference actually and what are we going to see next from total juice what's the next step forward we've got 100 renewable fuel is it he could be more of it and more motorsport i think yeah we have to see more championships great to see another step forward really good to see another step forward we've got a yellow flag at the moment turn 18 that's that's uh in at the bus stop so yet further dramas for this race after two red flags uh look up the inside there wasn't gonna quite go we're gonna say thank you to our colleagues from total energies and enjoy the rest of the event and let's hope for a trouble-free post race and it's tricky tricky tricky out there this is not the kind of weather you want to be really pushing hard well you you have to push hard but um yeah it's uh it's not easy basically you know the visibility is is very low um we could hear that when we rode on board with uh negrow even behind safety car conditions he was saying look you know it's visibility's poor it always is on this track the higher speed nature of that lends itself pretty poorly to visibility and um yeah is is to run up the chemical straight before the calm that's one of the worst areas on track but uh the rain level now is is decreasing slightly so it's gonna help [Music] so totally zoo racing's remaining car after retirement the number eight with a hybrid system problem by the look of things for sebastian beremy number seven car uh now is sizing into the lead the advantage of robin fines in the lead of the race in the number 31 wrt car joining us late two red flags uh for weather and an incident that accounted for the other retirements uh that we've seen so far in this race that's the number 44 arc pratislava orica miracanopka with a substantial impact car in big trouble miro mercifully looks to be okay but 35 cars still uh running in this six hour race and getting what 20 minutes away from halfway mark we're going to talk as we see a quick spin at uh the bus stop uh for the triple seven aston martin to another aston martin star lou is down with ben keating we can see trouble for aston martin out on track there uh talk to me ben keaton about what it was like driving i'm really uh i'm really disappointed uh you know it's hard for everyone to follow the strategy of every car but uh we just uh made a bad decision twice yeah i i decided that i thought the track was good enough to stay on slicks and so we were one of the last cars to uh to come in under the safety car i decided to stay on slicks and then it came down pouring and i had to come in for wets and because i was one of the last cars to do it then we started at the back of the line having led most of the first hour uh feeling really good about the race we went from the front of the line to the back of the line and then we put marco in and realized that i hadn't done all of my minimum drive time yet so we had to come back in i got back in which would have been fine if it had been safety car but because they went red flag again they reduced the minimum drive time and i never had to get back in in the la in the first place sir so anyway we're uh we're on the lead lap but way at the back and uh so we'll see how it all works out but uh the today sure did start better than it's uh then it's looking right now oh i'm sorry to hear that i mean this is the gamble isn't it that you have to play for sure it was a it was a big gamble and you know normally i'm really good on hot slicks uh on a drying track and i thought slicks was the right way to stay but on that last lap uh you know i was i was on slicks i was coming down the back straight away by blanchomont and i couldn't even go in a straight line without aquaplaning around and so i made the call to come in the porsche behind me stayed out for another lap on slicks i don't know how he did it but it was really tricky conditions out there i was surprised they went green you know i thought we would stay behind the safety car and we'll see i expect another yellow sometime soon thank you yeah i'm not sure he's wrong about that either actually david said it doesn't really look wildly promising it's uh not brilliantly raceable at the moment you just saw there the triple c d station triple d the d station car satoshi hasino triple seven getting turned around in that contact with christina nielsen in the iron dame's ferrari you know in in low grip conditions like these those sorts of errors are much easier to make aren't they yeah definitely look riding on board here with nick tandy in the 64 corvette and he's trying to get as the position gets by the ferrari that's the sixth team in the car in front of him yeah the headlights around the outside and look the ferrari just got completely buried there he went around the gr race absolutely boxed in but uh i thought i wondered that if tandy was going to get boxed in for for a moment there but the ferrari lost pace in the straight line and then the porsche decided to pull right and then lift off to let the corvette behind go so visibility all round whether you're looking in your mirrors behind or in front is uh is very poor at this stage but stable conditions at least it's not the rain is kind of reducing at the moment and that's a good thing for this dryer line or the damp line that's uh appearing in front of them now why did the gr racing porsche move by the way from a spin on the opening lap or before the start for mike wainwright in that car that car is now third in gtm he had a blur of headlights coming behind him and when tandy came past went ah that's the headlights and moved away to let tandy come by and of course didn't realize there was a ferrari there as well and end up boxing in uh alessandro pierguidi as he was so nick tandy used to traffic really well and made that advantage but in that gr racing car let's just give them the heads up it's ricardo pera they are third in gtm matteo cairoli project one porsche second but francesco castellachi still leading in gte am and that was the uh glickenhaus just working its way past the uh united auto sports lmp2 car the answer by the way as to how gr racing have done so well is by staying out of the pits yeah they've basically kept themselves on the strategy they predefined they've been down pit lane twice this is a great view by the way this is exactly as it looks really when you're looking out through that windscreen little twitch there turn five see a gap open up you plant planted down the inside before turn seven the car lets you go and on the way down the hill towards turn eight so real good showcase of what the visibility or lack of is like at the end of the camel straight there and lou's pointing out one of those pit stops was for mike wainwright's puncher um one pit stop so far in the race as we head towards two hours and 45 minutes i.e a full american le mans series race back in the day one pit stop so far for the corvette uh yeah that long pit stop we saw under the safety car well it was a 24-minute pit stop because it was including the red flag yeah but but they did they played they they [Music] yeah so i mean i think we we might be lucky enough to have one of the old corvette classics might pop up and see us the tall bloke that was here last year and we'll see what he made of that one but still though we've got this situation where in gt pro that 52 car has still got a lapse gap on those cars and i don't understand that well if if it did just happen because all they did was park it under the red flag and change tires then that rule has to change because that's that's absolutely an unfair advantage oh somebody's chip wrapper has got stuck a little bit of banner coming off on the ultimate car who's in the this is a good fight here look to the 23 of alex lynn has found its way past that of philippe albakirk there's only one rule here and that's don't hit the blue car but he seems to be flying in these conditions he's been chipping away at that gap and closing it down hopefully it should be a just as quick as well there's no reason why not you know near identical cars both here so around the outside he goes before turn 18 just out breaks him a few bumps there for good measure but much later on the brakes still makes the corner a good move i wonder if he's got fresher tires maybe that car had new tires on the grid and 22 didn't expecting it to go dry i mean i don't know you'd think if you were doing it for one you would do it for both but they are sort of run independently by by the teams here's another battle is this for position it is esteban gutierrez going by sebastian ogier ogier in the red and black recent meal racing car and gutierrez grabs a top six run into europol looked like they were having a horror story at the start of the race and that's what this capricious weather that's why getting eased on the jobs by the jota car here comes the real team by wrt machine ramps over the curbs that's the position as well he goes by i mean i thought he was he was squeezed out of room there as he tried to go around the outside unseen by ed jones in car 28 uh just moved over drifted over to the racing line but was unaware of the closing speed of uh natto and uh yeah that could have been a big one could have been a race ending moment there back to sports nico muller is the next up we'll see that again and then in the corner this was this was fine i mean look ed jones running out of grip as he understeers wide and uh yeah and that's a plucky move but this is the bit i was talking about on board here goes he's got a clear space clear space but closes ah you're running me out of road oh there's that's really caught in the mouth moment there survives you look how great the forward visibility is you can just imagine how fantastic it isn't in the mirrors well what does it look like a ball of spray we've seen what it looks like through a camera what's it look like through the human eye you've been in that situation that was very similar to the view that we get yes that that lack of visibility i mean i can't explain how well i can explain it looks exactly like that shot shockingly poor very bad question you in terms of the tyres on the two united cars it looks as if they're on the same got the same kind of stint length the same kind of pet stop time i see no reason why given the opportunity to change those ties they would have done because the difference when you move to wet tires is there is no restriction on the number of wetsuits you can use exactly there are strict uh instructions as to what you can use for slick rubber as soon as we get to the stage where it's wet it's a safety issue there for whatever you need working his way past sebastian ogier there great run through the chicane and he's really enjoying these conditions as well tries to fight back into turn one but i think he's gonna get done as well by ed jones and a snap of oversteer for good measure seize the car 28 pass before oh rouge see with a rally car you basically put it everywhere because it's going to be mostly low grip well wet tarmac and and yeah well the thing is in a rally car he's used to the slip angles he's used to by that i mean the point what point the tire allows you to slide i.e quite a lot in the rally car without losing speed without losing but you can also feel it a lot it squidged around under you and you can feel that movement nicely it's in a in a sports car lmp two car like he's in now oh you run wide around the outside of eight i think it is yeah rough ride back onto the track don't get beat up [Music] that's how it happened he tried to outbreak the porsche number 88 down the inside and totally misjudged the breaking did he hit the yes he did yeah yes sir i think he's got away with that he's got away with that hasn't he that's great along the barrier computer game style that's what you get when roger penske turns up to watch your races you get a get out of jail free card and that's that was yours at the moment in these conditions there are two standout performances underway in lmp2 and they are from the leader robert kreins consistently in the the same at the moment from uh alex lim everybody else at least the 221s and 222's felipe albakirk is dropping back from alex lynn at quite a rate and look how much like you say graham look at how quickly he's catching robbie kibitza oh there's uh well now he's in his element i was going to say that the way the slip angle works in a in a sports car it's so much more twitchy you got very limited slip angle this eye when you lose it you've really lost it and that is in the barrier on the exit of 14. slightly more conclusive clunk wasn't it still kept it going though yeah surprising is that the gravel didn't just stop the car and the rear body work is still attached so it looks like he's got away with that as well i mean but this is a very different kettle of fish from when he was in the trash look at this two hardened pros of robert kavitza and a great run through rouge and radion for alex and he's absolutely flying as he puts it down the inside kabuto makes his life difficult by trying to squeeze him in but lynn having none of it and he's got the grip he's got the confidence in the first hour of the race antonio felix de costas jyotica was a hyper car not an lmp2 car and that clearly is now exactly what alex lynette is he is now in a hyper car compared to all the other drivers to give you an idea of the the difference here the the two or three laps leading up to that little battle that didn't last long with kavitza alex lin was six seconds a lap faster than kapitza he caught kabitsa he did a lap in 226 roughly 220 and has passed him easily as pulling away can i just say on the last lap he was the second fastest car on the track only race leader robin frieds in the wrt lmp2 car was going quicker they are lapping three seconds a lap quicker than the hyper cars [Music] let's join louise beckett in the pits richardson you're watching on seeing how alex lynn is putting in a great run there yeah yeah i mean very impressive in the rain you know when you look all these p2 cars are very similar and so that's camped in um but the position we're in from starting p14 on the grid a lot of that is down to the work that josh pearson did at the start he went from p14 to p five or four so um so far so good but with this weather anything can happen uh are you running the cars on same strategy different strategy obviously that's probably all gone to pots since all of the red flags i think pretty much everybody in lmp2 now is on the same strategy just because of how that red flag fell and then you know i don't we can't think of anybody that's necessarily out of sync on fuel so i think everybody's uh the same including our two cars so yeah all right thank you okay well while we're hearing from richard dean here's the change for the lead in gte am francesco castellacci spinning it away and matteo cairoli going by to lead for team project juan castellachi that's a rare drop look at that one light he was the leader excellent turn nine green painted surface trying to put his foot down and uh yeah obviously that pink surface way less grip than the asphalt stay away from that in wet conditions this is a battle for position as well isn't it this is 77 dempsey proton versus iron links so seb prio versus matteo crossoni andy prio and mum joanne i'm sure sister danny will be watching back at home in guernsey chrisony no mean driver been around for quite some time matteo crosoni uh so very much one of the ones who's on the roller decks at two or three of the ferrari teams as a go-to guy for gt racing great yardstick for young semprio who started his stream and he's got it beautiful tucked him up like a kipper i think is the phrase and there's that front-end grip all but he's got a bit we've just changed camera angle but i didn't like what i saw on the exit of turn nine from said prio there did he get away with that one i saw a big snap of overseers yeah no yellow flags i would say he's got away with it but he was pretty ragged oh big wiggle there from the this is the second this is albuquerque jones who we were watching a couple of laps ago has just pitted so they've fallen way back joker they're back in 12th and 13th position in lmp2 what's happened to robin friends last lap around 220 and the toyota in second is lapping at 225. [Music] here's another battle for position third is robert kavitza and philippe alberque coming up behind him tries to say move that his teammate pulled on him into that chicane but kavita was able to break a little bit later i think he's got a good run though down into term one if we go back to that view here they come it's got the inside covered no he lets it go and albuquerque's down the inside squeezes him gets the job done there doesn't he just need sardines to tries to switch back but hasn't got the traction by the looks of it first race i can remember commentating on robert kibitz's career was here in two liter formula renault he's been coming here a fair while so that was i think i don't think there's an outlier that by the way you would describe it for robin i suspect it was a little bit of gt traffic going quickly again now what is wrong sorry what is wrong with kubitz's car he shouldn't have dropped that amount of distance in a straight line on the exit of the turn one there's something up with that in which case he's either got a misfire or he's struggling for traction for some reason he was four seconds slower in sector one all right then philippe albakirk [Music] the rain is still slicing nick tandy's saying it's actually now as wet as it was when the red flag came out drive through for triple seven for a pit stop infringement uh no word yet on that contact with christina nielsen in the iron games has anybody else driven the iron dame's car by the way no no okay i was just checking antonio felix decosta's back in the 38 jota car which means that uh roberto gonzalez has done all of his mileage oh you little horror out there that is the delayed i mean bear in mind we're getting to the stage where it's something like two hours of drive time for someone who's been interested to start the race away from the uh halfway it's just when you think you've got the measure of the grip anthony and then it's rained a bit more in the last three minutes since you were there that's what i was gonna say the rain is intensifying from level three to four as they call it on our screens and it's gonna get worse up until ten past four we're now five two and level five is the top one that's antonio felix de costa off as well so it's not just dane cameron with you know limited knowledge that was a term one it's a living breathing thing it's a little breathing wet thing and it gets wetter [Applause] [Music] and here is this the alpine snapping sideways no it's people durrani closing in luis beckett what do you know i just went down to prema to ask them what's going on with this situation with the number nine and i said to the team so problem in the car they said not particularly and then just as they said that the whole crew jumped up and started clearing the garage so they're keeping tight lip but there's clearly something wrong in that case coming in yeah robert cabinson didn't suddenly in the breaking area forget how to drive uh the ultimate car has come to a halt as well they haven't really had the greatest run that's mature lahay i think the older of the two brothers i think we probably will won't we properly beached isn't it i think with or without that we weren't far away from it they're just getting heavier again yeah i think that's destroyed of course yellow at 15 58 30. okay prepare full course yellow at 15 58 13. it's not the rain it's not the grip that long camera shot it's the visibility between the marshall's post now that we've and if we go safety car i think we go red because it is raining harder still and look on board the toyota uh would you rather be down there or up here it depends if you go if you've got the grip and you've got the car down there but uh i'm quite enjoying this i must be honest i know that was an unfair question yeah just it's a huge responsibility you know when you're behind the wheel and you're in these kind of mixed conditions this yeah a double thumbs up there down at glickenhaus from jim but uh closing in on the alpine is a good thing but the toyota kazoo is yeah fighter that's the problem when it starts to become so treacherous it's out of your control then it's not fun anymore and that's when you you're sort of praying for a full course yellow or safety car well all you want is to be in control yeah and that's the weather's taking that away and now unfortunately full course yellow is going to make these cars even less drivable because what happens when you slow right down well two things happen you lose your tire temperature and the brake temperature of course on top of that but more importantly cars going slower allows more rainfall to you you're not dispersing it anymore you're not brushing it out the way and you're not seeing huge plumes of spray come off the cars anymore so the track gets wetter and you're losing tire temperature on top of it and it's raining heavier than it was before and level five is as i said as high as we go on the amateur i don't think there is a level six level one is a little bit of spits and spots level two is very light rain level three to four you can hear it on the camera there are a lot of very wet photographers in the media center when i went in there to get a coffee oh yeah i know i said get out there there's lovely pictures to be taken here we're going to shut up i'm downloading race leader in the pits oh yes this will be a change of leader third pit stop we're into our four of this race and cars are making their third pit stop total seven will go through to lead the race because the third place car and the clicker house are both falling down pit lane but you might as well when you're under a full course yellow it's effectively a free pit stop as other cars are traveling around slowly the time loss of the pit stop is less because it's mitigated by the cars circulating around the track slower there's probably a very good reason why i'm doing this and not being a team manager why are toyota not stopping i mean they're on a completely different fuel strategy to anyone else anyway yeah it's still a free stop but maybe they're so out of sync at this point that it would effectively just be a splash for them but they haven't stopped since oh i don't know in half an hour i'll tell you what trust them i'm sure they know what they're doing uh mike conway's on eight mike conway's done 18 laps on this tank of fuel uh which will have included of course on the safety car full course yellow et cetera et cetera so so it could take half a tank also the other thing that's important in this situation is to have a clear track in front of you when you go green again if you're stuck behind other cars and you've got that massive spray it's sometimes not a good thing um you just take it takes way too long to fight your way through the cars and actually the gt cars are surprisingly quick in these conditions they've got that mechanical grip soft to set up it you come across them when you're in an mp2 car yeah absolutely it's hard to get by and the lmp2 cars are losing almost nothing comparatively so three hours in three to go and we've had lots of interruptions with accidents and weather let's see how it's all worked out [Music] well the day started with beautiful sunny conditions a huge crowd here as far from a 37 car grid the great and the good gathering in anticipation of an exciting race and with an american car on pole position for the very first time in the now 10 year history of the fia world endurance championship with a bumpy crowd on hand for the first time in three seasons here at spa frontal shot to see ollie pluck lead the field with andre mcgraw on the outside of the front row toyota's third and fourth but not for long pla tried to go the long way around the outside ran out of road so dude and kevin ester locking up and ensuring that there was collision between himself and jimmy bruni in the 91 porsche whose car immediately started to shed bits of broken wheel and then it's tire porsche in a hole right from the very first corner meanwhile the toyotas had leapfrogged the alpine up the camel straight and we're challenging the glitten house of olivier platt for the lead sebastian bremi in second mike conway in third as in lmp2 antenna felix decosta beetled off trying to persuade everybody that his jota lmp2 car was also a hypercar given his lap times inevitably at the end of the first hour the toyota moved in from bwemi putting in the move finally that worked on the alpene on the clicking house and at the end of the lap mike conway went outside inside at the bus stop i think he caught olivier completely unawares there thought he got it covered off great battle for second place in lmp2 lorenzo colombo finally gaining the upper hand for prema as jota led toyota were looking at a one-two as miro kanopka had a big lose in the arc bratislava lmp2 car bringing out the red flags then rain arrived jump out of the car sebastian perry at the restart finding the car dying with a hybrid failure in the damp conditions he wasn't the only one in trouble after a slew of pit stops and tire changes on the grid more rain arrived and with a track awash the race director was left with no other option but to red flag it once more getting going again in the very wet conditions with lmp2 leading the way toyota fighting its way back past alpe the remaining car number seven mike conway the starting driver still in in the third hour of the race [Music] and more cars finding trouble maintaining the grip francesco castellachi spinning away the gte am lead towards the end of the third hour and we are under full course yellow as the ultimate car has gone off so full course yellow three hours in to the total energy six hours of spa franckish on toyota lead from lmp2 leader united 23 alex lynn on an absolute burn ahead of wrt clicking house and alpine second and third in the hypercar category united auto sports first and third in lmp2 with wrt between them prema back down to fourth place vector back up to fifth they did lead then a pit stop dropped them back down to 14th place in lmp2 they're now back up to seventh place in lmp2 so it's a real yo-yo in and out of the pits a of course with a lap lead in gte pro and team project one in charge at the moment in gte am but driver checks the first yeah well there was a red flag so he could have gone for a little leak but uh yeah he has plenty of seat time even if not all of it was motion yeah robin franz cycles back to the lead with wrt are they going to win this outright i don't know existed yeah alex lynn is in from what was third overall well at the moment they just have to be quick enough and fault free ferrari were praying for rain before this because they said we've got a demon wet weather setup uh it hasn't really played out into their hands in gte pro but definitely lmp2 this could be one of those races it just could be yeah absolutely you know you think of daytona's where the gt2 cars won outright instead of gt1 because it was so cold and so wet and so slow we might have that full course yellow remains out at spa frankish off three hours and six minutes in the books 2 hours and 54 to go down in the pit lane well in a garage somewhere probably hunting a cup of tea louise beckett in the booth graham goodwin martin haven and anthony davidson anthony you're the man who's got experience of conditions like these and it's not actually anything that really anybody wishes for is it no matter how good your wet setup is it's such a lottery when the rain arrives i mean it depends on your circumstances um if you're if you're in a car that didn't have the speed say like the ferrari in the gt in the gt pro uh class you know you're praying for a bit of rain anything basically to stop the inevitable happening um and it's come their way you know you just said it it didn't go their way they didn't they had the car to do it but it hasn't got their way they're a lap in front of of everyone in that category i know it's it's happened through chance in a way and maybe not through pure merit on the speed of the car but i think they have been there more so in the rain than they were in the dry um it just depends on your circumstances if you were if you were toyota and you had to speed in the dry you don't really necessarily want the rain to come and anything can happen i mean you see the streams the plumes of rain coming off for the cars even at these slow speeds it's uh it turns more into a bit of a game of survival the other thing to say by the way if we get back to green flag running with the conditions still as poor as they are i think the chances are very high that we're going to get another lmp2 car in amongst the hyper cars alex lynn under the uh full course yellow is only 3.7 seconds behind the 36 car and we saw the pace that alex had he was flying he really was him and uh robin friends were basically the class of the field really seconds quicker than anybody else grip three or four seconds quicker than any of the hypercars second pit stop of the race for the corvette so nick tandy gets out but the first driver change as we saw at toyota finally tandy gets out of that car and tommy milner never raced at spa before all practice sessions were in the try welcome to spa precisely zero inches in wet weather on this track full course yellow will be leaving us in about 20 seconds we're going to go back to green flag racing 20 seconds full course here yeah so for tommy milner this is going to be five four three two one full course yellow removed full course yellow removed thanks cairoli 46 the gte am leader all over the back of the 91 porsche when they're twitching around like we mentioned before you know the rain has fallen this is for cold is for position not in class but it is the position overall jimmy bruni is 20 seconds got him he's tired tucks him up like a kipper 22nd place changes hands so matteo cairoli with all the grip jimmy bruni what an earth is going on with the 91 porsche he's struggling a little bit cairoli a little bit it's like i'm driving to europol it had all been in the wall before that impact and this is just after ready on though that is he coming up the hill gutierrez has already damaged the left hand side the right hand side of the car don't know so it's the exit of turning nine this is where he goes in the second this is where we saw it from yeah that's just the offer that's done that's the end of uh he's got broken left rear suspension because the right rear wheel is not right rear suspension little drive shaft because the right wheel's not turning at all that's he's got one wheel drive and there's a long hill to climb to get back to the pit so that i'm afraid is the end of what is going to go down in the history books it's a fairly messy weekend this is very sketchy though very sketchy condition like i said it turns into a game of survival and you just basically when you're behind the wheel you're just waiting for the first person to do exactly what esteban gutierrez has just done uh in preparation for the inevitable return of the safety car i don't think we can be that far away i think eduardo freitas has got his hand hovering over the button i don't know never liked to second-guess him but you know you see a car in in capable hands going off like that and you go completely okay and there'll be a lot of chatter on the on on discord as well going back to him going my guys say it's undrivable but by the way before that safety card came both united alter sports cars have gone by the 36 alpine they now run fourth and fifth overall yeah ferdinand habsburg there is that down at wrt yeah didn't qualify the car yesterday driving third today oh and that was a moment for mike conway and when you see the toyota losing grip like that you know the conditions are bad but i saw a car before going there it was the alpine going very slowly at this compression there yeah yeah it's no surprise there's stunning water there yeah exactly a river runs under it the river runs across it right now as well that's the end of the road i'm afraid for into europol it has been a tough weekend for them he can't get out of that car he's right up against the battery on the driver's side isn't he yeah and then of course there's the the sort of impact barrier yeah he you know it does automatically [Music] very thin esteban um i'm sure we'll give it a try but you can get out the passenger side there or something you looked at me as if i didn't qualify the same sentence then how very rude no i didn't look at the side window completely misted up already just in a few seconds you talked we talked about that you know visibility sorry it wasn't mike conway it was kamui kobe actually of course had the moment we can hear from mike now mike conway um well done i'm getting the car back and that was one epic stint from you starting the number seven yeah yeah long stint lots of conditions as always here a spa yeah just looking at it on tv it's really bad it started to get very bad the last 20 minutes uh but they just didn't want to go full course yellow and uh yeah we're aquaplaning the whole way around yeah really dangerous so yeah i don't know why they keep going green it's not improving so i don't know but yeah luckily just to stay where we are and stay out of trouble yeah you've just been looking at the onboard here in the garage and saying you can see where where it's going out of shape yeah i was trying to explain to the guys where all the rivers are running down through turns three four you know a rouge and then uh it just builds up everywhere then all the way around so particularly bad between nine and ten uh so yeah we are really struggling then when it's like that and when you can't see you're hoping that no one's stopped in front of you so yeah it's not easy all right thank you thanks cheers there's an unwritten rule it's alex brandon who is brandon it says esteban gutierrez on our screen today alex is on an outlet oh alex well you know we just saw again kamui kobayashi don't worry lads i've got this i haven't got this he was lucky to get away with it alex brundle less lucky and uh yeah toyota still clinging on by the skin of their teeth as the safety car is out well look at this this is the 38 car antonio felix to costa ouch even taking to the grass to try and avoid i think that's christoph ulrich it is christoph ulrich second in gtam even then antonia i mean he was just a passenger at that stage all he was doing was twiddling wheels and tap dancing to try and make something stop and alex can't believe i see that i can't it's easy to beat yourself up in these uh in these moments but we've seen so many people make mistakes today and i've watched you do exactly the same and it's entirely understandable and your heart goes out to the driver because drivers make mistakes totally empathized but you know it's it's just so gutting when you you've just got in it's your moment to shine and this happens and i mean here's his season so he gets the deal with into europol then he's got a new teammate in esteban gutierrez who he's never met before yeah then he can't drive in sebring because he tests positive for kobe and then he's done a lap in these conditions and the cars just got away from him that is that's the totality of his season so far you know what we what we often used to do a jota at least was to keep the driver in the car as long as you could yeah and they did do that of course in changeable conditions because that driver at the time knows like mike was just saying all the treacherous parts because you're you're living through that moment as it unfolds and when you're that first driver jumping in like i was at le mans last year for example you you're just driving around your eyes on stalks just trying to pick out all of these reference points that the other driver has been slowly getting used to and adapting to as they've been out there it's definitely the safest thing to keep the driver behind the wheel during changeable conditions otherwise moments like that happen and the safety car came just too late to save them and you know well you just saw the running water in the in what was the curb area streams there are gonna be places where there is standing water and sadly for alex he just he clearly hadn't had time to adapt to those conditions exactly i i agree with mike conway actually yeah i thought it was quite a brave move to let the cars go racing there knowing how cold the tires would have been and how much standing water there was and when we saw jimmy bruni taking it so so gingerly around and we were saying what's going on going well why we're going red that safety barrier is not safe we will go red yeah it's not even a tie well you know we we we went red to replace the titanic there is i was about to say earlier actually before alex had his moment there is an unwritten rule in motorcycle racing if the race leader or championship leader comes across a line in questionable weather with his hand up and sits up red flag that's the message to race control whether you're you know if you're the race leader you've got the most to gain if you're the championship leader and you're not in the race lead or whatever sit up that's the sign this is no longer raceable and i've seen it happen a lot of times and there's no sort of direct corollary in racing but you know that a lot of these teams are going mate we can't drive in this it's undriveable look at that yeah there's another river before turning 14. looking at the safety car they're all across here there's every every few meters they rely race director relies on the feedback from the safety car it's a road car a very good road car but it's a road car and they're designed to work in you know fairly well in all kinds of conditions be it snow rain sun hot day cold day the brakes have to work the tires have to work as a racing car like the one we're seeing craned away right now is so bespoke so specific in its narrow window of operation it can't cover all the bases of a road car like that porsche safety car so when the race director asks a safety car driver what are the conditions like he's eduardo protested his eyes on the circuit to say look yes i think it's raceable it's so hard for them to predict because these racing cars are totally different from the safety cars that that perception you have from the safety car is always going to be different and it's always going to be easier and look at all these cars going on i know it's again you know i'm not doing anything to sort of force eduardo's hand or second-guess him because he knows an awful lot more about all of this nonsense than i do but we're at the situation and i think actually i think that's the final straw and it's gonna be it's probably gonna be a reasonably long way because it is still fairly dark overhead where was who hit the barrier alex yeah then he trundled on right quite some time and then hit because i was going to say a little earlier when we saw we just saw it again actually camera there you go you're sorry yes but when we saw dane cameron have his incident at the same spot but not make an impact before the changes they've made there he'd have been in the wall yeah without a shadow of a doubt that was substantially further over yeah if anything it almost showed didn't it the conditions have deteriorated in the time between and look at the cameron's off and right okay we only saw this bit of that incident before that was not ant losing it or or aquaplaning that was christopher rick in the ferrari almost coming to a dead horse in front of it because it was so wet antonio just didn't expect oh look at that and that's why we've got the red flag i mean under safety car conditions yeah oh and that was who's third uh i think that was christopher was christopher yeah it was marcus so again i have to say i don't think we should have gone racing there we shouldn't have gone green for all sorts of reasons first of all the rain hadn't stopped wasn't getting any lighter and the water wasn't going away secondly everybody running behind full course yellow so at 80 kilometers an hour no tire temperature no tire pressure left no brake temperature cars are running slightly lower anyway than they would have done because the tire pressure would have gone down a little bit because all the temperature goes out and you can't go fast enough in those wet conditions even to get a wet back up into its operating window it's like a piece of mahogany with some nice grooves cut in it you they were going so slowly really it was only really likely to go one way and that was downhill and unfortunately for alex brandler into your pole that was the you know that was the final indicator that said okay really it it's not raceable and now again we've got cars lining up third red flag this is am i right this is the second consecutive race we've had three red flags do we have three red we do we have all red flags for weather in sebring i think we had we have at least two and i think we stopped by the third red flag except we did the final red flag look at this place look there's you know bits of blue sky all over the place it looks like the simpsons over there it looks like hades behind us it could clear okay so there's two issues at the moment for clarity here one is that we've got um standing water at several parts of the circuit it's unraceable and borderline and drivable as we've seen the second thing is it does look as if uh up at the exit of jackie x corner there is barry repair uh required after alex brundles 34 into europol oraca clattered that one alex out of the race and joins unfortunately a growing list of cars that appear to be uh out of this race uh he already lost that 44 car ac bratislava with miracanopka uh that car after an impact with a barrier that left plenty of oraca parts spread over the circuit and then the dramas that befell subway me in the number eight toyota that car suffering some kind of electrical systems failure that required specialist recovery uh safety and a good hard sit down and think about what he's going to say bicep weight yeah and plenty of time to get back into calm said and actually how you say that man that suffered some kind of electrical failure that's how that came out red flag conditions here for the third time in spa frankishon the clock continues to count down from six hours to zero in the total energy six hours of spa frankesha and the fans have now got their coats on as well because the temperature is definitely dropping outside it was a nice warm day this morning very warm day this morning it was i believe proper factor 50 weather actually it was bright and sunny it was beautiful certainly for and who's got you know just a little bit of the old fair skin complex going but uh it's definitely wrap up warm now and yeah we were we're expecting a few showers during the race what we've actually got is a lot of rain a lot of times um i didn't know it was a track run session as well he's clearly keen desperate to get to uh another another room and this is really in my mind probably the deciding factor is that those barriers have been pushed back and the post has been moved a little bit maybe as well and if the barriers can't move they're no longer safety barriers the only safety involved is if they move away as the car hits them and takes some of the energy away dissipates some of the energy and we've had four cars off close to that point one of which hit the barrier one of which was off when the inspection was carried on as well so yeah it's and again you know you can't say to christoph ulrich that he was going too fast for the conditions because he was going at a very sedate speed but even in a paddle you know a stand-up paddleboard you'd have been going too far there i think you'd have been in a bit of trouble in fact that's probably the only thing that we get around this circuit right now you're right yeah absolutely i don't really blame any of the drivers for going off there i don't blame any of the drivers for the near misses that they had is i just don't think i think even under the safety car conditions it was tough to stay on track this this is spa by the way at its very best hey fans welcome back whoosh you know it is seriously you know they just spice and here comes the intervention with the big hammers yeah so basically the circuit as it stands right now with that barrier it's not as it's homologated correct so the fia cannot allow a race to happen on the circuit that they haven't approved it for safety and uh this is being a grade one uh grade one fia safety condition circuit and therefore it can host races like formula one for example much faster cars and the world endurance championship and um as the circuit stands right now we're not racing on it race will resume at 16 40. and and in a month they will have wec hello and ewc the 24 hours of spa motorcycle race will be here within a month and that's all part of uh the track changes have been made to allow motorcycle racing and it is to be hoped super bikes and moto gp to return to spa frankersham well still under red flag conditions here at spa mike conway leading in hypercar but not on the road that is robin friends the lmp2 leader who has control of the race of course with antonio fuoco um a day and a half ahead of the rest of the gt pro field by uh some witchcraft or magic and team project ones matteo cairoli leading the gte am field we're getting ready for an interview ah corvette has somehow found a way of getting nick tandy out of the car and there he is bedford's fastest mini hot rod racer nick tandy you're half under my umbrella half not but um i mean you're good you um you've been in the car from the start well done but how is it i mean at the moment it's terrible um i've been here enough to know when you get once once the hills kind of soak in the water then um you know the next little bit of rain just goes it comes off the hills and goes straight across the track and you get these these big rivers which you see cause all the problems and um you know you might think it's not so much rain and it's not really but we've got these great big wide tyres and okay they're groups but they can only dissipate so much water so it's part it's part of an endurance race at spa that we we have this sort of thing but yeah it'd be nice to to get that going it looks like we're clearing up a bit so are you telling the team welcome to spa yeah basically i mean they had it easy last year i think there was we didn't have to mix conditions so i i did they asked kind of what we need to be prepared for obviously i've been here a few more times than they have before we came and i said just make sure you've got all the tyres ready in the ovens at all point when the sun's shining make sure you've got the full wets ready in the ovens because it can happen at any point and and yeah it's gone against all the forecasts so we're just we got caught out by the red so badly it's like we were coming in to pit the the pits closed when we were at the last chicane and we couldn't pit and then we had to stop because we couldn't do another lap even on the safety car so it's either stop under red for emergency service or stop out on track because they're out of fuel but then we lose a whole lap plus all the track position so um we're lucky to jump jump ahead of the the gt lead of the 52 during during that run if we get the wave by now then we'll be back on on the back of the pack on the lead lap so still race on i guess all right thank you how do you think tommy's going to be out there and what have you said to him because obviously this is his first time at spa he's had some running obviously over the last few days yeah i mean tommy's a you know he's a he's a top pro he knows how to deal with things of course this this will be his first time running laps in the rain at spa so you know it won't be easy um he'll figure things out i'll give him a quick debrief on the radio on my way into the pits so tell him where the standing water's the worst and try and look out for that but otherwise we've got to try and move forward all right thank you ladies and gentlemen nick tandy that's the most nick tandy interview ever excellent stuff from nick you can see hat he's all right he's really frustrated though and he heard from him the frustration about uh the tale of the timing of that red flag but that was what i was about to say before we went to the uh the interview with nick is to be a wave by which there should be in which case we've got the four gte pro leading cars back on the lead lap but are they in front of robin freeze in the safety car queue or is friends the no no it's the class no no no but we had the wave round last time to get everybody who was in front of the race leader ahead so there was no class wave around because the entire class got waved around right there so that got that's the answer is no they're not that got stuffed up so it's only when it's only went because before we were in exactly the same position with friends at the front of the race he was leading the overall race is he pulling the barrier they're trying to put a new post in and then pull the barriers back out from where the post should be now we're talking earlier in the week about the standard motorsport toolkit that's effectively a lorry mounted hydraulic version of the hammer that's what that is hammer tape yes um laptop fanatical devotion to the pope right he's working for ferrari those of you who are not familiar with uh antique monty python sketches um go onto youtube later yes and look for uh nobody expects the spanish in position yes then none of it will make sense but at least you'll know what the reference was there's the damage that uh was incurred on that ferrari in the last safety car tyres going out onto the grid and again okay i'm still not on board no i'm still not on board with this the race is stopped for safety not for service yeah you know you're not you're not on your tesla supercharge you're having a coffee and and you know a wash and a brush up this is not this is not safety the race is stopped yeah and it won't start until it is safe to do so and no i yeah some people i'm sure could argue yeah but you've got now hot tires going on to the cars and you're better it's safer to start with hot tires but let me tell you after just half a lap around the circuit under the safety car conditions in the wet you're going to be back to stone cold tyres anyway i don't it's uh no and and i understand it is in the regulations and so you can do it but i don't have to agree they'll be uh repairing bodywork next well there's no reason why they can't part of the rear of someone else's car um who did he turn around station i bet that's a bit of uh probably fit after the race i bet that is a bit of x-pro drive bodywork yeah just dock them back into position and then just bond it on yeah reverse the aston back up super glue it's the driver you're all right back up here all right that by the way is why oh rouge is called oh rouge because there it is a sort of natural iron ore deposit pork site deposit in the valleys and the river runs red because when you put water and iron all together or water and iron together as all classic car owners know you get brown stuff or a dead badger in fact when you walk through the tunnel under a rouge the water seeping is rust yeah it is it is rust rusty let's get down to the alpene team they've had a bit of an up and down race as well i wonder if andre negrow can shed a little light andre nagrell obviously before at sebring the stopping and starting actually helped you guys but i mean it's all over the place now here in spa isn't it yeah yeah the start was quite difficult for me i don't have any power in the beginning then i step by step i get i got used to the car uh yeah now it's undrivable i i did have to stay on the track as much as as much as i can but uh with the aquaplane and everything it's going to be dangerous you know and i almost crashed five times in my three hours inside the car now should be getting better and we can continue the race but for us the rainia is helping us a little bit to catch the guys in front but i still two hours and a half so it's a long race to do well also if we look at that timing page it's just so mixed up isn't it between the hyper cars the lmp2s how do you even know where you're at right now yeah actually my team said okay yeah we have we are p one in the category but we are p5 say p5 yeah who is who is in front and they say ah there's an mp2 okay yeah but for our car is really difficult because the traction control that we have is not so so good in this condition especially so yeah we have to be calm in this moment and just finish the race okay thank you you're welcome you know and and we are now in survive and take points they are the points leaders so you know they won in sebring um but here it doesn't help them with their fuel tank size but what it does mean is it reduces the overall performance of everybody which just brings them perhaps a little closer to the game with toyota but as you can see the number toyota is second 708 the clicking house is third as uh it make apartment first and second in hypercar and third in hypercar is the 36 alpine so they'll get points for a top three finish if they keep it on the road and who knows what the others might happen what we could be looking forward to here is a pretty historic result in a world championship event uh best result overall at wc events in the previous 73 races from p2 the second overall at the moment and the last time in uh aco rules racing in lmp2 car one overall it has happened in the us five minutes we are under five minutes to resume the race behind the safety car we have five minutes to resume the race behind the safety car the voice of uh competition director assistant race director lisa erewa so eduardo has clearly as most of the drivers probably have popped out for a comfort break while things are red not tea coffee but uh right let's catch up with 91 porsche driver richard leitz they've had a fairly up and down race as well and he's not actually been in the car yet jimmy booney the starting driver is still in richard lee we've got five minutes before the race is restarted again and you've not even been in the car yet yeah you know jimmy he started from p1 and he want to give him back the car on p1 so he still need to drive a bit yeah i mean that was an awful start for you guys and we we spoke about it right at the beginning of the race but i mean so much has happened since then as well yeah i mean it's a typical spa spa race i would say where from the weather we are really in mixed conditions and obviously there is different categories and some of them struggle really in the wet condition and you saw quite some heavy rain in the middle of the race with a lot of aqua planning so at that time it was uh correct with the red flag and i think now they had to repair the barrier so a bit of a crazy six hour race here in spa but we are still racing and i hope that i'm allowed to drive soon yeah i hope you are too um you are making some leeway up the field jimmy is uh yeah as i said he wanted to give him back the car for sure in p1 all right thank you thank you i love his sense of humor it's a dry sense of humor from the let's not forget 2015 wc champion richard leitz he's been very lazy isn't he he's just making jimmy do all the get all the heavy lifting i'll just get in for the final 20 yeah well they've been above the clouds they've been in sunshine all day long they have no idea that it's raining on ground level when it's raining it must be interesting actually to be up in amongst the rain not normally when you do you're on a commercial now yeah there you go that's certainly an idea of the elevation and to give you an idea of the elevation here that's taken from the highest part of this circuit that's where that's from to give you an idea of the elevation it broke and davidson [Laughter] the stupid mistake of going out my bicycle around here um he has a hundred meters of elevation around this track from as you go around the lap so where we are one of the lowest points on the circuit and then you work your way up to the top of our rouge and the chemical straight to the com that's i think the highest point of of over 100 meters where we sit right now so um robert kibitsa there behind the wheel of the uh premier car did we get to the bottom of why he was really really struggling for pace because his pace was nowhere hacking straight line speed by the looks of it as he went up towards o'rouge um out of the source it just he lost second over fist to uh albuquerque in front of him and then continued to up the camel straight towards the turn five six and seven but i can't work out what was going on there maybe a traction control issue because sometimes you go up so extreme on these cars to limit the aquaplaning it actually it's quite detrimental to just the straight line performance but i don't i don't know it's there's definitely one minute under one driver engines may be started engines may be started please clear the grid immediately please clear the grid immediately i would say by the way our fans are still here in their thousands in the grandstand and let's hope we can give them plenty of green flag yes racing yeah it has been an absolutely prime spa race hasn't it so far three red flags in in the first half of the race well we've got still as much rain as you want we've still got more than the former ones uh worth of racing to go absolutely right ten minutes more than a season through the formula action cars ready to roll off behind the safety car as we get ready to go back to well not quite yet green flag but we'll start moving and then we will begin at the wave around behind the safety car so our third red flag again after an incident in very wet conditions robin franz leading last time a non-factory team won here in an endurance race at spa frankenstein was in not a six-hour race but in the thousand kilometers of the le mans series back in 2006 manuka and julboulion won for pescarolo in their c60 judd cascarolo was a small manufacturer it wasn't a audi toyota porsche or all the others will wrt be able to produce that wrt who almost literally live within the stones throw the workshops within a stone's throw of this track i mean they are as belgian as freaks mayonnaise and uh and 176 different types of beer so you know that would be a if they get an overall victory as graham alluded to earlier it nearly happened at le mans and the only remaining lmp1 car the porsche just managed to claw it back on sunday lunchtime but i don't think there's gonna be that kind of window of opportunity but who knows in two hours this might be bone drying as quick as it was in qualifying well the key here is going to be can the toyota exploit the pace advantage it's got certainly in dry conditions here there's two hours for this race to dry out but the moment the pace difference in the changeable conditions or the really the worst conditions between trines and kamui kobayashi was three four five seconds yep in the wet conditions what this year is the threshold at which you can deploy in the west oh i'd have to double check and that's right 190 kilometers an hour wave around here look yeah here comes the wave around is it 130 in the rain we will ask that question we've asked it on there it will now be answered instantly by our helpers on our whatsapp group i'm sure uh i won't have to ask twice again at all for anything so in these kind of conditions now i think seeing as you know seeing these cars here at the back back in the uh park fermi there i mean wrecked racing cars you've got to start listening to the drivers behind the wheel a little bit more if you're in raise control now just assess the conditions they're the ones that are going to get the best feel for the track and obviously speak to the safety car driver by all means but i think you've got to you've got to speak to multiple classes multiple drivers to assess the conditions properly before we go green again i think it's the safest way to do it well let's have a little listen to iron dame's christina nielsen who is with louise beckett christina nelson is another one of our starter drivers that's finally out of the 85 iron links um you've had it all haven't you today yeah absolutely i mean we we started with dry um we had semi-wet conditions and then went into full wet it's been a bit of a bit of a roller coaster here um the first couple of hours not how we intended to start i mean we had a good qualifying yesterday best ferrari you know p4 and the grid not a perfect qualifying but definitely hope for you know maximizing and perhaps turning into a podium but yeah with a hit to begin with and you know all the chaos afterwards it just put us on the back end and yeah we were just struggling to try and salvage some decent um positions and points in the end here and i should say welcome to wec welcome to spa because i mean you were a last minute calling really yeah absolutely i got the call on thursday um i haven't been around since 2018 uh where i've done le mans the last time so yeah it's been a minute it's been such a pleasure i mean all your names in ireland does a fantastic job it's been amazing to be a part of the crew is really well put together they welcome you with open arm as well dorian ryle has been great teammates and you did have those incidents at the beginning you were in the gravel i mean that is the issue with with so much gravel now at spa i mean i think it's good i mean we just talked about in the scene before they started like maybe people are gonna be a bit more cautious but i mean when you're rear-ended and you get taken out by a car who hits you from behind then what can you really do like i just got spun around and unfortunately i was trying to like kind of back out to get away from the other cars that were coming towards me and yeah i mean bad luck on bad luck okay thank you good to see you thank you so much yeah finally as the car possibly one of her longest driving stints and uh yeah that that wasn't a double double either i was just i don't know a stint in a bit so we are heading round behind the safety car wave round of lapped cars from each of our well there were no lap cars in the prototype classes but in our gt classes have happened uh let's have a little word from we're trying to get the height of the commentary team back up to something approaching sensible to a man who raced here last year in very different conditions for corvette racing oligarch fairly pleased to be watching from the outside today nice to be here yes sir i was just talking to ants actually about being up here in the booth and looking out and not being out there in the rain uh yeah it was last year was a lot drier a little bit nicer to drive around here today it's been tricky treacherous and well there's rain there's rain and then there's spa front rain yeah i mean he just looked i mean i looked out after about an hour before the race it was lovely beautiful and then almost on cue the clouds just rolling in let's hear from the number 22 united auto sports car philippe albuquerque currently third in lmp2 all the cars in front are four position apart from the number 45 which is behind the race to 31 wrt he's not but the others are voice of uh gary robert shaw who heads up the engineering at united auto sports 45 is when he binder in the algarve pro car he is a lap back so i'm not quite sure why he didn't get waved around um but there you go last year was the first time here with the c8r so the the setup sheet was a blank piece of paper and that got filled in and then in the dry conditions okay great somewhere to go tommy milner first lap in the car having driven exactly zero inches of spa in the rain was spa in the rain yeah absolutely absolutely you know of all the people that could be throwing in there at these conditions tommy's your man you mean he was the full guy nick tandy thought it was driving the plug i'm starting in seriousness you know we we saw that actually with alex brandel just getting into the car and going off we saw it kamui kobayashi just getting into the car and almost spinning it on the outback being in the car staying in the car doesn't make the weather any better but it does give you a better handle of where it was really iffy last lap which which you know nick can have told tommy a dozen times yeah and that information but you still haven't got it in your head no and so much of driving around any race track it's about the rhythm and the feel and you understand rap after lap after lap and when you're being thrown into it and you're trying to sort of get your own feelings for exactly what's on on track and where the rivers are and where how things feel you know can you touch that curve can i touch this can i can i do this where can i go on the throttle how do you you work with your own rhythm and that's that's the really tricky thing and this corner in particular we're looking at right now it just seems to be treacherous absolutely treacherous well plus you know if this was mid-ohio you might have raced it in you know star mazda or whatever up the ladder you might have raced it in mixed conditions for europeans you might have come here in formula renault or you might have come here in f3 or whatever and have some idea of how it changes but coming in and having never driven it in any conditions then to try and figure out you know the guys come on the radio as it starts to dry out potentially as it looks like it might do exactly you know is it time to i don't know if it's time for slicksmith i don't know i don't know how i'm doing this you know it's he's he's not going to be able to pre-judge where he's going and again if it starts to rain then he's going to have to lean on what nick is sort of suggesting to the team in terms of experience of course and and you know i know they made the stop and when they got tommy in they made a couple of changes and they're looking to just improve the car and understand things so it's yeah yeah we'll go to team radio here with car 36. it's amazing [Music] i honestly i think if it was a track of lava and he was on fire most things would be still no problem to nicolas again you know the opposite end of the experience scale to tommy you know been around the block a few times here you know he was here when it snowed he's been here when it rained he's been here when you know probably when the tarmac melted and peeled up but so yeah you just you know in these conditions you you sort of just have to deal with it you do are you doing you're calling on all your experience and i was just talking to talk to tommy before he got in the car and saying remember we were at shanghai that year when it rained and rained and rained and it was red flagged and it was horrendous and you know so he's got plenty of experience to pull on and you know tommy's no no newbie anymore so he's yeah he's really relying and pulling on all that experience and the final words just don't bin it mate excellent safety car remains out here at spa as we approach the end of our four three red flags uh at least three safety cars a couple of full course yellows as well predominantly for cars getting beached in the gravel and for barrier repairs after offs we have only lost three cars arc bratislava for miro konopka uh the number eight toyota sebastian buemi after the first restart uh the car decided it actually didn't want to restart really and couldn't be bothered and then alex brundle losing control of the inter-europa cars so near neighbors from slovakia arc bratislava and poland into europol are now uh actually exact neighbors together i mean that was yeah that was so tough to watch yeah horrible yeah just out of the pool no knowledge whatsoever of where the rivers were and everyone would say well he should have been driving slower he was driving slower yeah he was driving so slow he felt like he was in reverse and he was going to be overtaken by his own shadow he just could just catch you out and just i think we've been there ourselves and i could totally empathize with him you know it's so easily done and he wasn't the only one either in that corner it's just unfortunate the speed he was carrying at the time and the angle the car got into he was never going to save it and you've just got into it you know i said at the time ollie your eyes are on on stalks and you're trying to manage the situation it's all new to you yeah um you've got every every single sense haven't you completely out on stalks at that point and your body's intense totally tender every movement you make is digital within the car because it's you just cannot relax and afford to just looking at that on board you know from my viewpoint as just a pedestrian driver if you were sitting in the safety car now alongside pedro cacero you would be convinced that he was going to crash at every corner even though it's four-wheel drive because it's going faster than you would expect any road car realistically to be driven and yeah on board of the alpene it still looked very quick for wet weather conditions but the car's almost stalling it's going so slowly is the difference isn't it you know when you look at these prototype race cars out there you know they're so finely and highly tuned and they really are so much better and higher performance than any road possibly but we are going to be going back to ground here back to green flag racing safety car coming in this lap and again d station will be investigated for safety car procedures it's always them maybe they try to get their bit of body work back out to the front alex lynn already harassing the uh the glicken house in front of it he's not allowed to overtake until you get to the safety car line exactly so if the clicking house drops it he might be in trouble however he is going to give it a good run that's people durrani in the clinton house in third place overall alex lynn in fourth place and fifth place is felipe albuquerque robin friends our race leader [Music] [Applause] greenfire conditions once more as we head towards the final two hours of the total energy or total rain perhaps uh six hours as part from wrt's robin friends leading in an mp2 car toyota's kamui kobayashi in second people durrani third in 708 the glitten house and they are now going by the algarve pro car that's the blue and black car that's basically the headlight in the gloom on the left hand side that is a lap down on the rest of the field so he will need to make sure that he's not holding up the lmp2 cars behind him and this is the view on board with 22 23 is right in front that's alex lynn and felipe albuquerque is going to try and go with him down the inside even though you can't see necessarily the blue flags around the circuit for this situation you do have the marshall system inside the car at least to rely on so yeah he lets alex through down the inside and turn eight now there was uh a lot of traffic and there is the pole sitting aston martin for the gt yam class trying to go around the outside that's uh battle for position where are they that's 33 on christopher ulrich in the air forcer car that is a battle for fifth place it goes by christoph ulrich who's in the tf sport car enrique chavez making his and i think there's a whole group of pro gte cars here together that's the iron links car in the 91 car of jimmy bruni still who started the race and there's only just up two hours left so is he going to give the car a mini stage to richie's which he was joking to louise beckett that he'd only give the car back once it was back in the lead where it started the race but that might be a [Music] oh and there was contact there so he didn't see so he should be trying to allow that uh that the car laughing him past uh albuquerque but instead making contact still giving benefit the doubt the visibility's so poor out there he might not have seen him come around the outside yeah that was into pif so he was having to turn in at some stage he thought if you're not coming i'm going gr racing this is ricardo pereira under pressure from the uh pro class ferraris for second place yeah michael christensen pulling the pressure on yeah sandra pierre guidi again he's been in since the start james collado has done a lot of thumb twiddling he got by the gr racing porsche of ricardo perez look it's pretty grim boys i mean you know i know you're professional racing drivers and everything but off uh who's in sebastian i see yeah asia has spent has not done any dry running in this race damage the front left as well of that he's going to go off again because he won't know that he's lost front end grip here are the two joker cars going [Music] right so they've been able to change tyres on the grid but clearly they haven't been able to change the nose oh this is grip yeah it's up there somewhere you know it's coming but there's you know is talking about this mystical thing you know being in the groove having that rhythm and the rhythm the rhythm of the rhythm but you do know at a certain stage even if you can't see it i'm really close to the breaking point yeah and you're picking up all those references you know so it might be the trees or it might be a bit of a barrier you are absolutely existing with really on peripheral vision at that point using using your side windows and also the feel of the road there might be certain bumps and you might also just be also somehow listening and trying to pick out the points just out in front and there's also a degree to which particularly on points like that you're just getting right to the limiter you know that you're running out of gear that's where you're going to be on the break so yeah i remember jonathan palmer telling me what in a formula 3 race at silverstone in the pouring rain uh he went off at uh club corner because he didn't see the car in front of him go off and he was second suddenly there was no one in front he didn't see any brake lights didn't see the corner straight off all right came back on this leader had no idea where he was ended up winning racehead anyway by the way has been told to come into the pits to repair yeah i don't know if you'd already mentioned that will be on his way in any time soon some big battles have there team have been up and down the top half dozen norman nato pulling them back up again by their bootstraps right behind him nick nielsen in the a of course are 83 cars and they have now cycled through to their third driver they're the first team to do that certainly yeah francoise was in quite early wasn't he unless he rivera only did a stint i know it might have been an hour and a half under red flag conditions is because of force major you don't necessarily have to run all three drivers and that and then we had that story didn't we from ben keating was that he got out of the car in the second red flag and then they realized he hadn't done quite enough drive time so they pitted again to put him in but then they were issued with the new minimum drive time so he had done enough so he didn't have to do a change so it was unfortunately a bit of a an unforced stop driver changed in the number one but it's the nose change there i can see it's actually cut loose the fastening tape has broken it's not so much that there was a bit of flaw missing it's that he was about to lose the entire thing and have a bit of a pachito lopez moment and change through goes the af corsa car and so that is nick nielsen moving ahead of norman nato for sixth in lmp2 yeah there's the nose you can see it there just in front of the car to get it done degree of running along the barriers didn't it on the far side of the gravel track was that lake i think it was previously sort of missed straight on he first went off in uh turn 14 uh went off and hit the barrier that's right jimmy connor like checked the car and we wondered is behind the wheel now uh they did the driver change of course they took that uh opportunity conditions continue to improve i do agree i think it's gonna start trying quick yeah yeah shush if if it doesn't keep raining it should in theory start to dry up fairly rapidly as this track often does northwest amr have got their hot shoe in david pittard uh lap record holder of the nordschleife seem to think i read that the other day was that i know i didn't hear that great uh until the last race he was yeah yeah but still he's always gonna help that's a decent bit of peddling isn't it uh yeah so obviously my resources were not quite as up-to-date ferrari won two here we go you know that they were praying for some rain and it seems to be helping them 92 porsche though back in the fray on the brakes [Music] and fighting you're spending a lot of time looking in the mirrors right there christianson's really taking a part of it [Applause] quite on is it alessandro piergue giving nothing away in second place antonio floco still leading for ferrari and what the boys saying about the resurfaced parts it's any slippery limits slippery more slippery yes in the rain it's definitely more slippery [Music] one place we've seen a lot of cars losing control is turn nine jackie x corner which has been substantially reserved yes so yeah that makes it and of course rivers run across it as well so there's that too so looking at that uh pro gt class fight it looks like yeah because of that wave round as nick tandy was saying before hoping for that they would get that lap back on the uh the 52 ferrari so it looks like all the ones that got the wave around have actually managed to reclaim that lap they're obviously far behind but at least if there's now another safety car actually the corvette's a minute behind the lead yeah but he's on the he's on the same lap at these now which is what tandy was hoping for he's not that far behind no he's 20 seconds 21 seconds behind the race nice before it really is yes because the whole race seems to be turned on its head in gt we didn't see how on earth anybody would get that back and in the last restart from red because they waved the whole field round they couldn't then do another wave round right the rest of the field so that um so the unlapping didn't happen but this time it has it's never going and there though it wasn't that was late sport aston going pretty much as quickly as the pro cars right behind [Music] yes it is the toyota slips past the wrt of robin friends into le com kamui kobayashi behind the wheel now on car 7. he still looks like he's really tippy-toeing doesn't he look like it's really underneath him and he's yes and the clicking house has made some good headway as well as he continues to catch uh the wrt robin friends and i think [Music] but uh yeah the wrt was two minutes twenty so they're clearly the drier the circuit starts to become now the the hyper car is coming into its own again is that that allowed for belgium he's got all the connections here all the connections look at it misting up inside the toyota though that's not good or is that outside the toilet that's probably on the screen you use the wiper as little as humanly possible because all it does is make things also be the tear offs off of the windshield they all start to bunch up and i can all the water and the grime can get underneath it so kamui kobayashi back in the lead for the first time i wonder how few laps a hyper car class car has led in this race let's see the old stat man on that yeah lmp2 wrt's robin fines has been again seems to have been in the car since the start of the race but has been in the lead a lot and now he's got the glickenhaus pepo powered by people we knew that was going to come at some stage and said we're using it now people durrani in third place for clicking house the pole position sitting car well it was uh sean bellaire wasn't it behind the wheel of the 31 wrt that did uh majority of the work in those changing conditions you'll want to see him back there fighting at all one of the uniteds i think it's fighting the with the alpine well first of all that will be alex lynn with nico lapierre behind him i think that's who it was uh i don't know if it's probably the alpine starting to uh switch there we go yeah second overall and i think the alpene it won't be long before he is third overall either uh the deployment threshold by the way for hybrid drive is the same in the wet as in the drive so 190 kilometers an hour here we go here is the albeit so they don't get to fire it out of the hairpin with a hybrid drive look at this this is grim as you like [Music] as they came over radio he could see another set of lights in front which is why he didn't go left trying to sweep around the outside he was waiting to see whose lights they were and when they came to him i think nicolas because he may not get more than one chance if you take it in the wrong place if you make a lunge and it goes wrong that's probably going to be the end of your race in this weather yeah oh look at that the grip level there in the dry all the drives have been saying is unbelievable compared to what it used to be you could see that he was riding the curb and still gaining ground yeah it's certainly looks looks a little bit nicer than last year is frustrated [Music] couldn't get by there he's going to pop down the inside into turn 12 yes he does makes his way past finally but he was getting pretty frustrated up until that point second united car felipe albakirk is doing exactly the same lap times as alex live in the 23 car so it's not going to really be that quickly but he's only a second and change behind so it won't take much of a delay in a gt clump before the two united cars are together penske down in 12th ahead of the 28 jota car 38 has been off a couple of times the jota car just in front we saw the penske off twice didn't we with dane cameron did it slap the wall well yeah we it got it sort of went out wide and it was having a big tail slide which then got straightened up the back just tapped the barriers and hit and then he found some uh some tarmac beyond the gravel trap and came all the way around so i did say that that uh when the captain is in here you get a one get out of jail free card and he played it then and then yeah then he had another one he had a spin that didn't do any damage either but uh i think he was one of the first ones to make that mistake at that corner wasn't it was a gt car that spun i think we saw a ferrari spin off before that [Music] now all the engineers are going to be on the radio to the drivers going okay right when can we when can we look when can we think about going to slicks i thought the drivers will be just ignoring ignoring for as long as they possibly can yeah know from driving your road car those really brutal little speed bumps well those are much worse much much worse and nico would have been feeling that yeah we can see it just starting to come can't you and if the sun stays out like it is that damp line appearing the spray reduces and now the wet tyres start to overheat and i think that's what we saw going on between obviously the two different tyre manufacturers so they're not racing each other with the goodyear versus the michelin and the hypercar and so that other factor to consider as well and i think the yeah the lmp2 car no intermediates anymore of course just wet onto the slick so you've got to get that call bang on there's nothing in between anymore so it probably means they have to run them deeper in to where they really want to be and have them moving around on their blocks of rubber and they'll be shedding rubber off left right center and as the track continues to dry it's the only thing they can do but if you're in a hyper car even though there might be an intermediate you don't want to squander a pit stop just to fit a slightly better test and that's it you know you just got to try and make that call to kind of just make the full leap to drive let's say you're in the toyota and you've got to come in in three laps you're not gonna stay on the cane wets you could put on a brand new set of wets the real the real gamble comes or for the clicking house or for the alpine do you move away from a wet weather tyre to a maybe an intermediate a sleek immediate or do you have a super soft slit that you might dare gamble in it it's always a gamble whichever you do i think today we're going to see them easily go just straight up to the stakes if it doesn't rain towards the end of this race 51 still to go but you should be able to make that jump because it's warm enough and the sun is coming out the only time you'd really be begging for an intermediate as if like that day we had in shanghai that time where it's very cold yeah just like miserly rain in the air and it's never going to drive you're really in those intermediate conditions that's when the interior is the one to be on there's plenty of energy around today and the sun is still up and it's still there you can still just about see it it's always there you can't often see it yeah so ali i mean other than it's lovely to have you in the booth and and falling straight into your asian levon comedy mode immediately what earth are you doing here [Laughter] i've come here with uh with this driving academy i've set up so the olympian driving academy and we're running experiences to the races so we're bringing people with the corvette travel experience coming to come to these races and we're bringing cars we're bringing people bringing guests and uh we're kind of setting ourselves up for le mans we've got a big group of people coming to le mans so we have a village set up there so we've got media and other members of uh the gm europe um management they're gonna be coming along and we've got our own guests as well so it's yeah it's gonna be a full-on experience so yours is the red c8 that i've seen downstairs whose is the yellow one with the ragtop roof it's not a ragtop roof it's the it's he wishes it's convertible it's not it's got it's got buttresses behind like it's the like it's the the batmobile and yellow it's beautiful it's a fine machine and it's it's i don't doubt it yes who's is it yeah it's it's one of my colleagues so uh yeah we've got we've got 12 of the c8rs yeah so see i wish that's 12 c8 but like 12 of the the corvette stingrays with us uh with uh with our driving academy so yeah plenty of action going on i don't think even laura's got 12 c8rs is she the boss no no no she has not however as we as we spoke to uh to laura glaser earlier that will change when it all goes gt3 because i think that is looking like being a big roll out as well yeah it's gonna be a really exciting time so it's it's very exciting to be part of of this whole process and you know gmr are going to be coming to le mans next year with lots of machinery and it's gonna be a lot of fun it's gonna be great to be sort of seeing how that develops all this is corvette cadillac i bet somebody is just champing at the bit to run camaros in gt4 europe as well just just that because people love these cars garage 56 car as well at le mans yeah there we go all happening so yeah exciting times we look forward to seeing you at the moment we won't i've actually got a picture of that as well i think you find that was kristen said i think he had a pike or two before he arrived as well meanwhile uh the great man was in fine for meanwhile lots of racing going on excellent to see ollie gavin excellent to see uh laura whatchup clausa as well from gm racing the head of everything with uh gm [Music] as well actually talking of lemon our lemon commentary crew graham will be there i will be there and davidson will be there it's disappointing in the pit lane we will have louise beckett and the return of the redoubtable and unintelligible uh duncan vincent and joining us also in the commentary booth uh will be uh aviating peter dunbrecht yes and i'm allowed to know announced that we'll be joined for the first time ever on air by jasmine jafar he's going to be our third expert driver so a man who has plenty of lemon uh finishing experience under his belt as well and the wc race whatever it is uh it's it's great to say here we go he's got a very different point of view [Music] on air as well so he's very excited to come and we're delighted to have him did you miss your other lead i think oh i did i did yeah ben constantius will be uh will be our third he will be rejoining the team joined us in knockdown a couple of years ago so it's going to be no fun at all and where we'll be able to hear and see everywhere so if you're watching us in europe or across europe and uh the eurosport network discovery sports network if you're watching us on motor trend if you're watching us on the wc app if you're listening to us streaming via the website wherever you are all of those and more will be available to you for the 24 hours of the month 2022 the 99th year of le mans because 2023 i don't know what they've got planned but i think next season is uh for all sorts of reasons there's going to be i know at least one thing that got planned and it's extraordinary it's an extraordinary many things right there's a race going on here's the alpine taking third place away from wrt so our lmp2 leader robin franks still our lmp2 leader but no longer on the overall podium no longer the overall race leader or second as the hypercars start to reassert themselves and auntie davidson it is drying up is this the stage now where you might as a driver it's not really yet is it that's antonio oh yeah that's as close as you ever want to go um so yeah antonio we saw before coming into the pits for a just a regular pit stop scheduled pit stop but that was not part of the schedule going off at turn 14. i did see that come up on our screens actually a yellow momentarily appeared and then it disappeared so that's that's explains that one and just because we see 31 dropping back and then hypercars making headway he's still the fastest car out there in lmp2 yeah so the remaining question on pace in uh can click and how's catch total well i'm not sure how much the weather affects that just did receive double oh lots of sparks off the wheel gun i thought that will that might not be coming off but it did yeah they're usually such a slick operation down there corvette it's rare that's a rare sight see that but but yeah i think i have been studying the lap times of kobayashi and people durrani in the clicking house over the last few laps and they're they're kind of trading fastest lap times two minute a teams two minute 19s i think the gap is just gradually increasing it's up to five seconds now between the two of them this battle continues to raise now nielsen with the chrome car norman nato we're on board with him in the blue and white car they've been backwards and forth up and down like the assyrian empire he's got the run though look but all but the club and right in front of them at the way corvette is robert kubica in the premier car right in front of them so this is a three-car lmp2 battle for supremacy kavitza is the next car up the hill there he is in fact that gaps opened up and there you've got richard meal and algarve pro so that's a battle for position as well could have done there is just to back off he knew that they were going to get caught behind the corvette back off and give yourself a run for the exit of radion and uh he could have found his way past the air of course to there but uh nicholas nielsen is up he wasn't thinking it was just charging well that's you know it's part of the past of endurance racing when you're coming up to the slower cars you're trying to lap them through they are considerably slower especially straight out of the pits as the corvette was with milner this is a bit of a missed opportunity there by natto it's an interesting moment can they close down uh the robert gabitsa card i think they're going to because because he's in traffic well he's gonna be two traffic at that yeah and he's still not by those two cars so he's behind that way he's caught right up now as the back of renee binder lila wadu in the richard mill racing team is just in front naruto sent it down the inside gets it done and by the way also catching both of these cars are the team penske car and the 28 jota yep they're there in fairly close contact as well they're there you're trying to [Music] so there is a ferrari just in front of them and here's the united battle for second in lmp2 so it's interesting uh alex lyndon the 23 card is going down on the inside there on the porch had the speed in the full wet conditions but albuquerque is catching him in these intermediate conditions united battle for second place flea of albuquerque coming past the porsche exactly as anne davidson suggested half a lap ago normanato should have done with a head of steam up behind alex lynn in full wet conditions on fretwork freshwets alex lynn left felipe albuquerque in on on tired tires in less wet conditions alex hasn't driven this car like this before albuquerque's got endless piles in these cars yes he was in america last year last week yes he's back but he's driven these cars in all sorts of conditions so many times is that part of the advice it's the driver's style how they can switch a tire on in full weight where you need the the tire temperature and have a you know just just have a bit more confidence in the car moving all around over the rivers like we saw earlier on but in these kind of conditions you could have a car that's just working slightly better it's working the tyres less and keeping the tire temperature down and maybe that's what albuquerque's problem was before the way the setup is on that car you don't know it's just it's very you know it comes down to the smaller details which can actually escalate in those kind of conditions and make quite a big chunk of lap time yeah and it aided in no small part of course by the red flag conditions we've seen there are no fewer than 16 cars on the overall lead lap still now that means a small issue for any of the cars in those 16 is kind of dramatic effect on a finishing position still here very close to hand right with robert kubitza now looking for the move up the inside not available there but uh well one thing that stayed consistent throughout these kind of damp or wet conditions is that robert kubitz is just going backwards i don't know what the problem is with that car but it's just it just doesn't seem to have the pace particularly in the straight line it seems yeah which is coming up now on the run up towards blanchard let's see how normal nato gobbles him up up the hill because this is just you know the balls there's no uh driver input there's a bit early here look and that's pretty hard for the the fuel nozzle to get on sometimes you stop way too early looking at the distance they'll be talking about that and that's how it should be done the united of alex lynn right in that yellow mark up to the board on the numbers it means nobody has to sort of shim you around and readjust the position he could be much faster as we well know you know these uh tenths of a second what they're fighting for out of the track wrt because this is the real team car coming in at wrt and presumably since both wrt cars stop at the same time this was a scheduled stop in two comes the a of course a carp nick nielsen into comes team penske's dane cameron and out goes the premier car uh a bigger pardon the wrt car of robin friends friends so here's the first out well that wasn't duet [Music] that was a good year slick who has gone slicks all by the way of that group with the exception did alex lindstart i think uh yes he did uh yes albuquerque now leads from kubitsu are now on the 20th lap in this stint everybody else stopped after 19 with the exception of lynn who stopped after 18. okay but who changed tyres louise beckett what do you i know where i'm going to find out next but what i will say are the dollies are out for the number nine primer oh the the dollies are out off so it's often as he got damaged no he was so desperate to get past the two gt cars here we are right he sees a chance on the inside but those two are fighting and wanting the yeah comes over the wheels on the grass go round and round they don't slow you down do they he felt like he had to carry the mission on down the inside but twice close what we got here joked around the outside of the ferrari there's contact not giving the spa and the other jokes was off as well and here is dane cameron out of the pits and here is the air of course carved nick nielsen out of the pits it's oliver rasmussen in the 28th it's antonio felix to costa in the 38 for penske and they are right in a sleeves rolled up battle now aren't they team penske's felipe nasa so his first lap oh drift again he's not driven this place in there this weekend all of this opposition this is position sixth down to ninth in lmp2 will stephen still hasn't driven the 38 jota today this weather so memorably described weather like this in le mans by mario andretti as slicker and snap when uh when the andretti car crashed in the uh in the porsche curves and unfortunately their hopes of a family podium went west 95. philippe albuquerque and robert kavitza in so that will cycle robin fryins again back to the lead in wrt's car number 31 just watching uh rasmussen there in the car 28 fighting the pinsky and this was the run up the hill towards uh le com with uh decosta slipping past the penske and you you sense this kind of vulnerability when when you see someone fresh out uh like philippe nassar is in the penske you you sense that vulnerability you think right it's time to attack i've been out on track i know that you're new out on track so you don't know where all the limits are or are you know and where not to push and you're kind of you're the hunted at that point and you know this team well you know joe to well and they will be on the radio game the car in front of his position he's just on an album you've got to give your driver that that's spice that incentive there's nick nielsen having a little look at oliver rasmussen and we cut away could you bring the the hunter had become the hunted there yeah and uh good run on him on the exit of uh i don't think he can get the job done towards o'rouge there's probably probably as much grip on the inside tight as there is on the outside on the normal racing line as well so does he get a run up there he's got a great run on there on the penske there and gets the job done around the outside you can just see that level of confidence the difference in confidence that he had rasmussen against nasa who's obviously usually brilliant in these conditions but he's just learning his way step by step as he continues to laugh i wouldn't know when the last time he drove this place in the rain was but it hasn't been for the last few years for sure felipe nasa i mean again as we saw earlier on this is like a single seater battle listen i mean this is proper single-seater elbows out racing this is what i was waiting to see from lmv2 this year the most uh hotly contested category out there in my opinion there's no balance of performance everyone's pretty much got the same equipment pretty much just to mention by the way with all the pit stopping we've just seen lmp2 up into the top 10 overall comes the gte pro leader yes this is messy look we've got a we got an am in the uh in the lmp2 they're getting overtaken by a gt he's gonna be well in the way through this path section from 12 13. they're all queuing up behind him yeah you got the jota running a bit wide there and james allen in the algarve pro car also on and out lap as well so he's not feeling the love for the tires on the surface or any of that yet he's just feeling his way around trying desperately to make sure he doesn't bin it just thinking he's not on slicks has he nobody's been uh brave enough to go onto something line there yeah but look at the spray on the inside there and again look watch james allen at the bottom of your picture there's so much spray offline and on you know everybody venturing on to that green don't do that it's still pretty wet in a lot of places well you know what it what are we doing straight on there james allen another 15 or another 15 or 20 laps to the next fuel stop then i think unless it starts to sprinkle again it'll absolutely won't have any choice they're hunting out the wet exactly yeah the wet tires are overheating as i said earlier on in on the dryer line you're just going to have to wait it out until the the wets kind of almost become slicks as the blocks of rubber wears down and they've got to try to match the conditions there once again you see uh the joe to just pull offline just try and hunt to get a bit of wet to cool the the treads of the tyre down but it's uh a losing battle i feel at this stage fantastic action the two united cars are a second apart 18 seconds behind them norman nato five seconds behind him kabitsa then half a second behind him is antonio felix de costa in the other jota car that we're not looking at and these three cars as you can see covered by a second and a half there's the number five penske felipe nasa now feeling the love a little bit more he's holding off nick nielsen nick in his second third fourth i don't know i'm team stint in the car but nasa fresh out of the pits a couple of laps ago now he's now it's starting to come to him and and the temperatures that drop down are now back up and he's and of course when those blocks of rubber start to wear down i'm presuming he just jumped in on the same set of tyres did the driver change during the fuel stop only of 35 seconds worth of fuel yeah i guess so the more your gauge of rubber goes down the harder it is to get the temperature back into them it was a minute and one the stop i'm not sure that's long enough as well yeah [Music] you're right it's been a close battle for the last 15 20 minutes and and lots of them you know here we are ollie milroy in the porsche the inception racing car yeah absolutely all over the back of the ferrari in front there's francesco castellachi ahead he's had his moments uh today said prio the next car behind for dempsey proton in the porsche can't see him in the shot at the moment i don't know if the two drivers out in front kobayashi and people durrani had lots of traffic on that last lap i need to keep an eye on these lap times because they're being caught because lapierre did a two-minute 19 compared to their two-minute 21 second to 19 compared to two okay maybe it was just traffic it could be a coincidence just two laps in a row watch i'm kind of wishful thinking here that we've uh we've got a bit of a race in our hands with uh lapierre putting in some seriously good laps here by far the fastest driver out on track right now decosta has now caught kabitsa and he's going to pass him here the gr racing car jumps the curb so too does decosta he gets a good run on kubitsa but couldn't handle it trying to go around the outside can't get through there the gr asia car and that is ben barker currently seventh in the am class in gte am and antonio couldn't get by there probably just as well actually because he'd cut turn four so he will get a warning for that so to answer the question from out uh the last uh two laps for each of the three hyper cars uh the number seven car 221 point three and a two twenty three zero uh the glickenhaus 221-3 221-6 side by side yeah decosta nearly going through with his tyres on the wet so much more grip yeah but kubitsu was on the try that's alpine 299 nineteen four yeah it's getting quicker the other two are beginning to struggle overall point five seconds now that was fifteen seconds the alpine being a little kinder on his tires and again and antonio felix de costa they're hunting out the little wet patches just trying anything to cool those tyres down by it from united auto sports they're in a bit of a battle here is that moment where de costa ran clearly wide off the track in uh in turn four at the top of uh radion an irony there's he's actually carrying too much speed for the tires to handle uh if he carried a fraction left and i do feel like the past i do feel like if he did make that pass stick he would have had don't pass don't pass don't pass let him go but he's got a realistic run here if he comes through uhm it's totally dry there look this is kind of slick conditions on the run down towards the bus stop chicane at 18 and 19 but can't get the job done there the problem is it's murdering the tires you know this is exactly what where the tire where the tires die because of because they overheat so chronic but still you can't overtake down the inside anywhere because you have to go on you have to commit to the wet stuff so and you can see that because rasmussen is now catching up this battle disaster has clearly got the speed but he just can't place the car down the inside on the wet stuff well joined now by united also sports willow will hello how's the race been going for the team hey there yeah it's been going pretty well uh let's see we're we're third now and i had a i took probably about a total of an hour of driving in the dry and then i lined up just perfectly so when i got out the rain it was beginning all right so you actually had dry seat time i was gonna say a lot of people have had a lot of seat time and then very few kilometers with it yes oh again yeah antonio costa got the run there and coming up close from behind is the second jota car as well now oliver rasmussen so the team we were just watching actually you you the team may not know but we watched alex lynn immediately he got into car catch and pass and lethally and now the cars are right back together and it seems either as it's got drier or the tires have got more warm or whatever for some reason the 22 car is right back with 23. do we do we know do you know quite where that imbalance has sort of swung back the other way or no i don't know exactly um but um well the 23. oh sebastian bourdain yeah that's a barrier how long has he been in the car board a his first drive for the team he was two no no no just gonna beat it surely yeah the man from le mans i'm afraid that is gonna be safety car he's not getting that out of there he didn't have enough angle on the steering to stay on the hard standing uh yellow flag now safety car follows that's the downside to gravel traps and you know from your point of view yeah i'm old enough to remember when drivers complained about draft gravel traps instead of grass because they were you got stuck in them obviously they stopped you hitting hard stuff which is important as the speeds ride up has it changed spa do you think for a driver oh hang on a minute we'll catch up with dane cameron in a moment we'll speak to will owen in a second so the penske team with dane cameron in the garage and louise beckett joins him so much action going on in lmp2 especially for you i mean i've got to talk to you about that move you made where you managed to get it around the gravel that was awesome i'm not sure if that's a move but as i said better to be lucky than good some days just had it locked up and couldn't get it unlocked and you start running out of space pretty quickly and yeah we got all the new gravel traps around here and luckily for me there's a bit of pavement around the outside and then i was a bit lost trying to figure out how to rejoin and it wasn't pretty a few too many mistakes on on my end and in that bit but uh yeah it's all quite new to us his first basically first time running the car in the wet so we were kind of here there everywhere on pressures trying to figure out what worked some work some didn't and um yeah it's a bit of a shame because we had a pretty good lead up to the race we were pretty happy i think we made some good strides from um from sebring as a group so we were looking forward to a bit more but you know still about to go here with an hour and a half remaining and uh you know a lot of good prep on the run up to the mall here but there's also been a lot of activity going on hasn't there yeah yeah yeah all the the boys and girls here have been pretty busy in the background as well and um the race has been pretty frantic uh pretty typical spot here for the weather so but a bit of everything so thanks to everybody for for sticking with us and watching and a lot of great fans here it's been cool to see everybody um you know a lot of pictures from my whole racing verse a lot of passionate fans here in belgium thank you thanks well there was dane cameron better to be lucky than good some days what do you reckon i in in conditions like this i think sometimes you you just need that luck right that's definitely right yeah i mean um look obviously luck's a big part of every race and um you take it when it comes sometimes you're like oh man we won this race on luck but again you just you have to you have to take it when you can all right yeah and actually that incident has now thrown everybody a hail mary because everybody every single engineer is now going can we do sticks can we go to slicks can we go to slicks because you know that's what they're thinking and is there a driver here who's going no it's not dry enough yet you've got to go haven't you i think so and felipe was just saying on the radio earlier he was saying it's so close to slicks when they pit it so i'm pretty sure this can be the right time yeah so two things have happened in the last uh 30 40 seconds first is we have got a fourth gorgeous recovery affected sport car the second is in this little batch of traffic here as we get the uh the money too ready to lift the number 10 card to a position where it can be recovered to the track is the battle for second and third when we go back to green will be nose to tail because the click of the house has fallen back from kamui kobayashi into the clutches of nicolas and is still losing time by the way under full course yellow nico lapierre and alpena going safety car safety car please give us a safety car and that will cut the 15 second deficit what are we saying in tte pro yes brand new sticker tires slicks are the go and that was that was alessandro pierre guidi getting out of the car giving james collado an hour and 20 minutes level of generosity from ali is just unbelievable to give him that long in the car he lets you have as many chips as well zero zero of his chips are being shared i wanted to ask will it's been i would say unusual uh but this year it's not absolute really but how difficult is it to keep the focus that you must try to bring to a race like this when you've got the level of interruption that we've had you know yeah clearly you've the the guys on pit ball i mean uh rework strategy all the time how tricky is it for you to get a zone in and zone out uh when we've got changes in the weather incidents all over the place red flags tough um well i think the especially hard part is the changing conditions for sure because i was out there not sure if i was going to keep going or not and i was like i'm going to be on slicks oh rouge is going to be wet at the top and then turn 18 and 19 will be so that was already that that's a very difficult situation um i was kind of planning in my head for what it was going to look like but these weekends are tough for even if it's just dry in a normal race i mean you come in you have a little bit of practice and you're straight in right away so my biggest thing that i've been trying to improve is just adapting quicker and not just getting fixated on one little thing that i need to do better but having a more complete picture um and just bringing all the changes and every bit of input that i can you're a good guy to ask uh that you've been away from us for a couple of years you're back now what are the changes you've seen in the world endurance championship since you rejoined united water sports um i'll say about the the lmp2 field is by far the most competitive it's been i mean it's always been very competitive this series has been amazing but right now i look at the list of drivers and i'm like you know there's every race has a bunch of cars that could win and they're all very close you could see that in qualifying uh yesterday so it's super exciting because if you do well here then you're going you know we're beating the best and here we go box box box in our antonio felix costa robert kibitz and now felipe nasa louise beckett in the pit lane is going to get busy isn't it lou so pit stops are happening driver changes are happening and i can see the glickenhaus jotas and the iron lynx ferraris all with slicks out around me and i'm gonna make my way along the pit lane now and see who else is i think there's no choice you absolutely i mean this is a natural break it's been forced on them to make a decision you can't go intermediate and you have to go slick because if you get that gamble right and everybody else goes slicks you're all in the same low grip boat if you hedge your bets you're going to get crucified because you don't stop again because everybody now will be on the same fuel center you say well you know as a driver might i mean especially here look one two three by the making the choice for the guy that's getting in you're not even staying it you've got to make the tire call for him that's a lot of pressure isn't it yeah it totally is when you're jumping in at the end and you kind of have a change in condition yes are ready but there's two tyres there are they both they bring both options yeah what's he going is that a slick the other one or is that a pair of inters for the front oh okay so now they're back timing from the end of the race and now they're going right we need one eight lap stint and then we're two stops to the end or one stop to the end and we're going to do the eight laps on enters and give you a chance and was it front only it was front only no it was for the alpene yeah it was all four all four and the alpine has leapfrogged up licking the house in that pit stop and run the second height after this pit stop this is where the pit wall earns its money isn't it wow so that was one minute 12 seconds on pit lane for toto kazoo racing who remain in the lead in number seven car jose maria lopez aboard the car going up through rouge and radion so yeah that gap from first to alpine hasn't changed it's just clicking house has dropped out well pit stops are go go enrique chavez in in the leading tf sport car in gte am so too is cebrio for dempsey proton i think he will get out as well ollie milroy in in third in the inception project one porsche so again qualified third they're running third with an hour and 20 minutes to go that's this will be the final stop for gta am uh should be gonna be tight it's gonna be tight stays on a full course yellow for a little bit while we get another caution easily but it's going to be tight one final question for will polloway which is we are in an era in lmp2 of effectively of super teams we've got united auto sports won everything a couple years ago wrt did the same joe tripping there and there abouts we know about the rivalry within the teams between the two squads what about that rivalry between united wrt jokes out for that matter the rest of them penske are here dynamic like no once again it's it's just like up the level of everybody you know that everybody's bringing you know most people are bringing two really good cars uh with you know david chichota and united so um it like having two cars having more good teams with good cars the each team pus pushes each other and then um like internally and then also against each other so i mean um no it's awesome like we're against like i said the best of the best and obviously with big changes coming to sportscar racing where everybody's here learning for that as well so yeah are you fun to be part of that new era i hope so i sure hope so but i'm not looking too far ahead or anything right now i'm very happy with united right now and the team is doing a great job thank you for joining us great to have you from uh somebody hot from the hot seat so toyota took inters as well during that pit stop so toyota on intermediate alpene on intermediates as well not sure what glickenhaus took slicks here this is the roll of the dice overshoot by the 22 united car 23's in alex lynn 22 felipe albakirk over i know he had to go round 23 so as a roll back into position and it is basically a whole field pit stop and and davidson at this stage you know hour and 20 minutes out just saw interest going on to the top two cars so they're not fully committed to slicks there's no choice in lmp2 you either go on a wet which you know is gonna die or death horrible slow driving death or you go slick and there's no option they went inters now they're back timing their pit stops from the end and if if they're going okay we've got one full stint and eight or nine laps or 10 laps enters now in 10 laps time will make a no we get another chance to make a tire decision i mean so they don't have to go a full stint if there aren't full stints left to do ideally you would have just stayed on the wait for that a little bit longer and made a decision yourself but like you say they've been forced into it so yeah straight tricky now well outcome the united auto sports and wrt real team cars thanks to will owen for coming up and chatting to us it's always good to have a little bit of right out of the garage inside and he said united weren't really quite sure why there was this disparity of pace early in the stint and then late in the stint between 22 and 23 door open it's cost of 20 seconds in that pit stop with 23. the two united cars have changed positions in the pits it wouldn't close because the driver change had been affected so the the uh alex lynn was out uh 30 habsburg in this car and alex oh alex lynn is still in and phil hansen had taken over from albuquerque in 22. from how i read that there was a driver hovering to get into the car oh and i don't think they could open the door to get alex lynn out i'm completely wrong but alex is still in that number 23 car i thought that was 22. it was that 22 in no 23. i can see through the window he's still fiddling with his seat belts yeah so he's trying to do him up again so ollie jarvis was waiting to get to make sense he was on he undid his seatbelts to get out he's there at the top of ours tightening exclusion yes can't open the door that car will be more to the point if a driver doesn't do their minimum time and is declared to start the race you're excluded six five three two remember the rain frost they didn't drive full course yellow removed the track is back several drivers didn't drive at all but there but there are there is a table produced of what they must do it will be they're gonna have to get him in that car well they're gonna have to get the door open otherwise they'll get to the end of the race to be excluded on multiple grounds so they could change the tires but they couldn't change the driver yeah i've never seen that before no i never have either i've seen doors come open when you didn't want them to but never not open when you want them to yes hello porsche 956 by the way what you you you you can't hear on air but so i could vividly see with willow and just having lefties it was his car of course initially was slightly slight trouble and he'd be pushed back disaster all of a sudden that changes round in about the space of about 55 seconds and from disaster to opportunity and the 22 car that features willow in uh now with phil hanson aboard is through and clear into second place touch and go where it's not right and it's still raging it is yeah but uh oh disaster stop and go that is the lmp2 pro class leader yeah there is ollie jarvis so alyssia rivera is back in the car kevin asked is he going to be rescued out of this michael christensen in the 92 car is third this system done you know if the porsche's got the pace here if you can get by the figure oh they can't slow the car down on the wet trying to overtake the slower car there of car 21. yeah i think he's going to get this going fresh into the car didn't get by again but again collado is the litmus test for michael christensen collado has a big lock up christensen has a tenth of a second to react to it a tenth of a second more and sometimes that could be enough to stay on the island he needs to be right up behind james collado to force an error from the ferrari driver this is for second place ferrari one two ferrari really not on the pace in qualifying and they were praying for rain boy did they get some thanks by the way look at this watch the porsche on the exit here look how sideways he gets there we go and he thought he had a run on him but then they both caught the the number 21 ferrari of simon mann yeah um he was really chasing the throttle there wasn't me in the porsche really really giving you everything going by the vector sport car which is fresh out of the pit lane with sebastian poured a still at the helm having been rescued out of the gravel it's bourdae trying to make his way through yeah yeah the gt's and having to tiptoe his weight past because you you're restricted to this very narrow band of dry line but he gets it done before the sauce made his intention very evident to the ferrari driver i'm having this racing line whether you're there or not make sure you're not [Music] jose maria lopez leading with an hour and 11 minutes of the total energy six hours of spa franckish remaining in second place and closing fast is major vasevier when we went back to green the gap was 16 seconds grim it is now 12. yeah there's trouble i think for the glickenhaus it's incredibly slow it's getting a bit right now after a very slow map indeed louise beckett so they went on to slicks at that last stop and i can see right now they've got a set of enters out whether that's the reason i don't know i think you're absolutely right good spot as they are the interest are going on i think it was just too much oh and number nine's off is that still it's all attached but he's gonna have to come in and it again it's turn nine oh it's just got its aquaplanes it's the jackie xcor that's gonna go in hard here and you know why water is running down the new the motorcycle track and coming across and finding its way across the line where they're not expecting it this is up at le comb and again that's uh that's not crystal fall rick still in that car no it's simon yeah and he's gonna be in the gravel oh no that's beach there isn't it yeah surely i saw the wheel spin and the car not moved of course yeah just yeah you gotta be so careful when you try to tease the car out of the gravel like that if you just spin them up it just buries itself wrt onto the podium right now yeah with that stop for the change of tires for drinking house and yeah it is going to go back to full course yellow surely now look at the way that the ferrari of james collado is pulling away now in second place from the porsche michael christensen roman dumas has dropped down to seventh place overall after that pit stop they gambled incorrectly full course yellow is a coming 30 seconds away they gambled incorrectly at clicking house lead but look how tensitive pachito lopez is being because of the yellow flags he then passed there under green though his speed is coming into the two 16s last time he's absolutely flying before he called that car there as the premier comes in for a nose change that'll uh sort their problems out as long as it hasn't damaged too much on the floor it hasn't oh gosh is out now now they practice these changes all the time uh during three practice sessions you basically practice changing everything that is changeable you can yeah yeah again as you said before the start of the race sure as x's x something's gonna happen 83's in as well now what happened to them lester rivera did he go off now this is the three-minute stop and hold on oh yes that was like applied two hours ago or something we just haven't done much racing in between times uh so that's gonna be disaster for them they're gonna go tumbling down the order the key here is luckily it's happened after during a full course yellow well this limits some of the damage but yeah also they're still reading that's the point i'm looking at where olga are probably going to emerge here and i think they could be lucky they could could have saved them here the full court could have saved they of course are here algarve pro are a lap behind yes three minutes yep it's not a full course yellow lap seven minutes is a full course yeah we're not even seven eight minutes probably louis de la tras did not expect that did he pulling out to overtake a lapped car get on to a slightly more wet part of the track maybe caught wheel spin or aqua plane i don't know but totally out of control that's where he was driver change at a of course the 54 car and that will be nick cassidy getting in i guess thomas floor out 708 there's the clicking house wet's going off and slicks going on that was the last pit stop that was a full course yellow stop where the alpine in the insect below they put the enters on to the number seven toyota both when enters now i thought that was then just being super conservative the gamble unfortunately didn't pay off the clicking house but when you're chasing i'm as certain as i can be that clicking house has been off the road it was 99 seconds in the second sector and uh under green conditions at that point a reasonable time is 30 seconds quicker than that that's not just that car going slowly it's had an incident yeah yeah well it must have just gone off the track but yeah he thinks he's around a gravel trap somewhere hasn't he maybe up at lake or somewhere he couldn't even stop in the pit lane in his box he was sliding pit lanes are always staying much wetter than the racetrack much longer don't they because nothing drives them out absolutely here is that moment where simon man lost control just you drift out wide and then you're on the wet stuff and you're out of sequence for that right left right section of the track just started to pick up the throttle and probably didn't need to or stayed off the throttle and probably didn't need to oh my lord we are just rocked up the great and the good at joining us right let's hand over the headset to robin fries and uh and davidson can have a chat i don't know aunt's gonna bail he needs another cup of coffee so joined by robin fry who appears to be not in the car for i don't know maybe the first time today robin this it's been odd driver sequences today yeah i thought i was only 24 hours at the end i know i mean but people have spent like four hours in the car and done about 50 laps i mean it's just bizarre really really and we know that spa has odd weather sometimes and you know that's what happens when you come racing in benelux you know people don't don't have good weather but it has been an odd spa race true very but i have to say that the faa did uh definitely the right call to stop the race twice because i almost crashed while i was doing 90 100 kph on the straight line and uh just because of akka planning so um yeah that's that was definitely the right calls but yeah it's been it's been a crazy race um you know yesterday they said chance of rain and spa on saturday and then you know that uh it could be a big one do you think it's about time we had points for most laps led like they do in nascar i think you'd be earning points for that wouldn't you by now i think so i think i was like proper in the lead and also after the first red flag i felt quite confident in the car um i think who who's behind me the alpine or toyota was behind me and i was pulling slightly away so yeah it was it was a pretty pretty happy days actually you guys were lapping two or three seconds a lot faster than the hypercars in those conditions and you know it the rain takes away their kind of advantage and then suddenly you've got a car that you know well well here is the position with an hour to go and wrt still in the hunt wrt with renee rasta at the wheel currently lying in third place overall a genuine podium position now the last full course yellow forced everybody to make a decision that i'm sure all the engineers were going is it time is it time is it time for slicks let's hear from the glickenhaus team people durrani just back in the pit lane he's handed the car over to roman duma and louise beckett is with him pepe duran you're looking on what's happening but um the glickenhaus came in went out came in again lost some time so what happened yeah unfortunately we had a miscommunication oh my radio wasn't working so i think they put slick stuff slick tires in the car and then we had to come in for cut slicks just a little bit of a mess at that moment but uh we were doing such a great race up until that point but i think you know if we can get back into the podium would be a great uh pre-lima race for us uh with a lot going on a lot learned and uh hopefully you can take all that to le mans going on to slicks i mean i assume that you didn't think that that was the thing to do then well to be very honest with you uh it was my mistake the i didn't know we had to cut slicks and uh and the radio was so bad i understood i think he was asking me cuts leaks or wets and i only heard slicks and so i said now it's not wet for sure let's go to zlix and i think this miscommunication because of the radio i didn't i couldn't understand the car cuts leaks and i think he understood slicks on his end so unfortunately for us but uh yeah if we can recover to uh p3 that would be good and move on from that right thank you thank you well robin franz is with us i think uh there'll be a few cars in between p3 and the clicking house that will be trying hard to make that not happen in the last hour but the previous full course yellow to this one that forced the hand of lmp2 you've got two choices full wet they were dead and everybody was hunting for water or slicks i mean there's there's there's no easy intermediate you everybody had to go slick didn't they yeah definitely but also as you're in the lead you're basically the first one who need to decide yeah every time you come in so um you kind of want to wait for the others we we did one extra lap on the floor to see what the others are doing but i was like it is ready but you know the biggest mistake you do is go out and do a mistake while leading with 30 seconds or 17 seconds back in the day so and the other problem with the full course yellow of course is that you lose all the temperature and if you're on a new slip it suddenly goes full course yellow and it's just on the edge of slicks then you can be in real trouble now the driver of the 23 united car is having to get out of the other door because the driver's door would not open they tried to make a driver change in the last full course yellow half a dozen laps ago ollie jarvis couldn't get in because the door wouldn't open happened last happened at the lms last that's the last race as well but the door didn't close yeah it went open all the time not closing is one thing for safety a door that can't be opened from the outside i mean i haven't got the rule book but in my head that's got to be an exclusion if you can't open the door to get to a driver who can't get out that can't be safe it could be very dangerous it could be very i mean you know you know you think of a grosjean style situation or a driver like with the arc bratislava car who's just hit the barrier in this unconscious you know you you you then need to be able to get him however that's for the stewards that's for post race they have at least managed to solve the problem i don't know how somebody as tall as olly jarvis gets across the car into the driver's seat but he's managed to so alex lynn has gone out olly jarvis has caught in he's now trying to do his own belts up because of course the mechanics having to reach across the whole car as well it's just a disaster losing a lot of time five hours down one to go in the total energy six hours of spa we're joined in the cockpit booth by robin franchot i'm gonna let you go and have a drink in a moment or two but uh any more craziness still to deal with do you think in this race i certainly don't hope not because we had a lot of drama uh with the weather obviously um so yeah we are pretty much in the lead by a good margin so hopefully no no more mistakes and there you go even as we're talking about the fact that it should be getting easier we see the vector sport car of sebastian balde having another off his first drive in the car his first race in europe in a while as well but yeah well listen uh one thing endurance racing and le monde particularly tells us is that nothing is out of the question and anything can happen with 59 minutes and nine seconds we've still got 60 minutes plus of racing so we'll let you go and join the team thank you right now in an overall podium position as well as leading lmp2 good luck thank you robin and thanks very much for uh coming up to join us i look forward to seeing you again next time in le mans final hour of the race i don't think we're done no we're not i mean but you know realistically there's still an hour of craziness to come loads going on in the last few minutes as we've been wrapping up that interview with robert including those two pit stops eight four seven united auto sports we'll come to that at the moment four three two one full course yellow removed full course yellow and removed what i was about to say is that the two uh pit stops we saw the pit stop for the 23 with the somewhat controversial remove the driver to the other side remember both of those cars came in together last time which means both have just did four laps yep i need to find out what the the minimum driver time issues were phil hanson just four laps uh before that pit stop for the 22 car and he handed over to will stephen uh uh he stayed there he stayed in yeah no yeah okay no so so why are they now good to go no they're not good to go they're full no no it'll be i'm sure they may well be counting back yes but i'm at a loss to understand why they just did four laps for the 22 car we got the 28 just going off there full course yellow cold tires you see jonathan aberdeen just carried too much speed and just locked straight away i knew that was going to end up in the barrier what do cautions breed more cautions yep they don't say that in america just because it rhymes or because it sounds like a true you know as you said full course yellow just saying exactly locks up the inside front way too fast gets on the wet stuff and you're traveling way too quick for the wet i think it's he may have even damaged the left front wheel as well the suspension that's the overhead shot of it are you going to kick yourself for that one [Music] alex lynn we saw it all playing out with the 23. you came in couldn't get out the car so it went back out again neither you nor ollie are small guys i mean what's happened with that with that door yeah i mean the door won't open that's uh i'm not sure so we had to go out and do the driver change on the passenger side and uh yeah it's a shame because i think we're going well i mean how do you what happened with in the car after that incident because i could see everyone talking to ollie here so how did you know what was going to go on how you were going to play that out where you're coming out of the car on the right hand side well luckily we have to do a jump out test anyway in the car so i knew how to get out on the passenger side um yeah i guess it was we went back out on sleek so and i had good pace because i've obviously been in the car for like ages so um but yeah it's a shame we've lost a lot of spaces and uh ollie's rapid so let's let's see what we can do for the last hour yeah actually just looking back you put in such a good run and that was awesome your drive yeah no it's it was nice so yeah it's a shame now yeah i know thank you thanks that is the downside of the coin isn't it and uh yeah i feel very disappointed i'm afraid for the number 22 united auto sport car they were 23 they were having a good run and alex lyon had uh yeah had a real good time behind the wheel but sometimes things come to chip you up jonathan aberdeen here in the gravel recently out of the pits on cold slicks on a damp track we talked about it said exactly the same thing with robin frying's full course yellow you're on slicks it's touching i mean it's touching on hot slicks but behind the full course yellow you don't have hot slicks as soon as you go green the most dangerous time of all yeah absolutely um you're right there because and also on top of that the way that the lmp2 car brakes work so you always get one brake coming in temperature wise before the other and it might be the left front coming in before the right rear or vice versa or the front's coming in before the rears and it's you sometimes hit the brake pedal in these cars after a full course yellow period or a safety car and you just get this dead wooden pedal and you have no stopping power and then suddenly you get a locker and maybe that's what happened there for poor old uh john aberdeen there into turn 14 but yeah no breaking no tire temp and and no room for error as well you know you can see there actually the road is a lot wetter than in many other places there's bailey you know a tyres width of dry so looking at that body works significant damage yeah i think it might have damaged the suspension as well that was quite a bit there uh the pit stop cars 54 and 23 are under investigation that will be the driver change for 23. so we're inside the final hour here at spa once more under full course yellow [Music] well the day that promised so much at spa frankenstein with the return of the fans on mass 37 cars on a sun e sunny grid and uh as we got ready to go everybody looking for plenty of entertainment from this bumper wec field round two of the championship got underway with an american team on pole for the very first time lincoln house and olivier player the man who set that pole lap taking the lead around the outside andre mcgraw but ran out of room [Music] so too did kevin s locking up and making contact with jimmy bruni who lost a tire and had to pit at the end of lap one that was not the only lap one incident and we were soon to head under a safety car the glickenhaus led at the top of the hill the toyotas are already up into second and third the safety car was scrambled back under racing conditions and still in the warm and toyota by the end of the first hour had reeled in the glickenhaus first sebastian webby got by for the lead and then inside outside or outside inside at the bus stop through when mike conway for second the first major stoppage miro konopka for alc bratislava the car snapping sideways and hard into the barriers stunning the driver who was okay but it brought out the red flags it brought out a safety car first then heavy rain brought the reds on the restart sebastian bremi's car decided that it had enough of racing and you know what with the weather that followed it may not have been a bad judge torrential rain bought a second safety car red flag period and as we went off once more wrt led in lmp2 the remaining toyota the number seven car moving ahead of the alpine take the lead in the hypercar class and then more dramas and more rain full course yellow leading to another safety car alex brundle fresh out of the pit lane having a big off at turn nine red flag once more back to green flag racing and as the track started to shed a little bit of its water the toyota found the pace to come back and take the lead from wrt the glickenhaus moved through into second place as it chased down the race-leading toyota and it wasn't long before the alpine followed suit to make it a hypercar one two three at this stage the alpine the fastest car on the track sebastian bourdaise returned to the wec saw him in the gravel he wasn't the only one making mistakes the premier car going off and clattering the barriers requiring a new nose and another trip to the pit lane and as the track continued to dry another set of full course yellows as simon manns car went off the road allowed everybody or rather forced everybody into the pit lane to change for slicks as the track continued to dry heading into the final hour under full course yellow now for the rescue of the 28 jota car of jonathan aberdeen and aberdeen being lifted out of the gravel and onto terra firma and in theory if he can start the car he should be able to drive it back to the pits the question is what is drivable toyota lead from alpine wrt leading lmp2 third overall ahead of their sister car from real team united auto sports 22 ahead of the delayed glickenhaus with a mistaken pit stop uh cheating pro leader in 10th place overall it's a ferrari 1-2 and for the first time 51 ahead of 52 which did at one stage have a lap on the whole field in gte am tf sport and northwest amr 1-2 marco sorensen and nikki team in the cars they are both in the pit lane having their final stop the aston martin's dominant in qualifying can they win the race in gte am into the pit lane comes the number 31 car and back out it goes renee rust at the helm of the wrt car now a full course yellow pit stop means that he should not have lost the lead well robin franz has just come in from the booth and uh louise beckett has caught up with him downstairs going into the last hour robin franz the wrt's leading in lmp2 and in fact you were leading overall you you were doing great out there in the wet yeah it was a bit of a surprise really because you started up front obviously the the hyper cars were behind me in the full full wet and i was slightly pulling away from them so that was a obviously great feeling i was the only one without spray so maybe it was a bit of an apologist for me but so far we didn't do any mistakes everything is going pretty smoothly it's difficult to see out of trouble to be honest we had two red flags which was definitely the right call because it was too wet yeah 50 minutes to go hopefully everything stays at one piece [Music] we'll just let that one go um we're seeing really good drivers going out here yeah exactly i mean it was very very easy to do a mistake even i had a huge moment um because of aqua planning and it's it's not about skill it's more about luck because suddenly you can like literally swim and you can go left or right and luckily i kept it all together on the straight and the car kind of reacted what i was wanted to do but um it was definitely very dangerous at one point of the race okay so what we got 45 minutes they're 47 so i'll speak to you in a while i hope so bobby freeze looking as relaxed as you can do as relaxed as a man who had lemon in the palm of his hands only on the final lap of the race well there is alessia rivera looping the af quarter lmp2 car around i was going to say the penske looking to go into the pit lane and suddenly went no this car in the way i think he hit him i think there was contact who with the penske brief contact with the penske i think there was going into the pit lane or before they got into the breaking news as he went by myself i think he brushed the uh the back of the penske well felipe nasa has been in and out of the pit lane so to his ollie jarvis so that's another short stop for united are they still trying to get that door open i don't know about that i think what they're trying to do is get themselves to the best possible position and gamble on more full course yellows keep the car as full of fuel as they can yeah the point to make here though is there could be trouble for the 31 car it's one of a number of cars that was just flagged up as being under investigation for full course yellow procedures okay well it may be a standard procedure but we'll wait and see [Music] looking here at the i was gonna say battle that's probably not the right word the procession for second and third in gte pro interesting point here though is that we went into full course yellow with the porsche right under the rear wing yep of the ferrari which is some little way back from that yellow porsche well it's not limited limiters are not quite oh they're never the same but you've driven along a motorway and watched one truck doing 90k take 45 minutes to pass another truck doing 90k because one of them's doing half a kilometer an hour faster than the other one and his and he's on his limit and you're right pit lane speed limits some teams and look the 88 team dempsey proton possibly have just clicked it back to be less optimistic than the factory pro ferrari and maybe that's the case with the porsche as well it's a quarter of a kilometer yeah an hour difference is all it takes to just creep away over what's a lap seven k's there's the uh jonathan aberdeen car coming well at least it looks like the wheels are pointing in the right direction left suspensions not in bad shape back to green in 10 seconds well this gt pro category is hotting up i think because the porsche has the speed in the dry conditions over the ferrari as it continues to dry we should see look that's the lead ferrari yeah that's top three there but forget the yellow 88 car in the middle of them so the porsche has the speed in the dry as we get uh running again under green flag conditions with 45 minutes remaining i think it's game on here is it dry enough can the ferraris hang out i mean you know ferrari said they were telling people yeah i'm just i'm just uh setting up the potential jeopardy well full course yellow uh under investigation they will look at everybody's traces to make sure they stopped enough the problem is is not maybe having the pace the problem might be getting by in some of the places some of the places might you might want to pass like blue on waved yellows look at this he's got a good run on the exit this one there's sideways got a great run here but i don't think he's going to be able to do it i think he's got it covered look how wet he's going to put on in the ferrari in second place antonio he's been in there since like monday so he is fully versed with the car he's just going to make sure that christensen has to go round him on the wet at least if he can oh and again a united car going by the lead toyota [Music] and look how close the clicking house is now that's not 16 seconds oh yes of course it is because it's the alpine that's second isn't it but that [Music] keep an eye as we get through onto a full flying lap for these cars getting back up to speed jose mourinho lopez through the last time he being 6.8 seconds ahead of the albin nearly two minutes up on the first of the lmp2s now up to sixth place by the way with the delay for that choker car is the click and house and the clicking house is not even keeping pace with the 22 united car that was the position against the united car it is for position with united car with the clicking house that is uh that is fifth position is that 21 again i think it is i think it back the yellow one i think it is i think that's simon man look at how wet it is there i think it is twenty one yeah yeah yeah it's it's the yellow windscreen strip i think it was that one and so yeah but oh again look that yeah the joker had to make avoiding action in nine where so many cars have gone off is that there's a big patch of water right there drivers have to be worn by the teams not to go to the inside on uh on the exit of turn nine well hit the ferrari if he hadn't gone inside that's a good point he would have had to slam the brakes on the deep blue sea literally there right riding on board with christensen yeah in the 92 porsche where's that ferrari gone it's gone it's the answer yes it has gone because that was not a ferrari in front of me no 1.6 seconds the ferraris put traffic between them now then what are we looking at here this is 22 chasing down 41 that's the real team car this is for position as well this is for second real team ferdi habsburg and behind him is united's phil hanson that's a position so it's presented it's it's third it's fourth fifth sixth yeah in line of stern here 41 22 and 708 with a shadow hanging over the car ahead of them the 31 under investigation for full court philippe nasa fifth in lmp2 for penske will stevens for jota in the 38th car fourth in lmp2 there's the car not making ground on the car ahead of him at the moment but quicker at the moment he didn't get through so ferdi got through in front of the porsche and phil hanson did not so he gets held up a little bit here can he dive down the inside into rivage looking at the fourth q there no fourth kind of cue he can't hasn't got the front end there let me see tried to tuck in and the nose is just sliding out wide too wet on the inside to make the lunges turn anyway but he might get the run down towards pull on here no gets a snap of oversteer i don't think he's gonna make it look the water comes all the way down there and he's on the wet on the way into but he just keeps the right hand side tires on the on the drive and that's obviously the loaded tire that gave him the chance oh yeah just on the left-hand bottom corner of your screen working on that number 28 joe turn so the left front did take a hit another mighty penalty for a safety card procedure this time it's going to number 60 car correct the hands keller the iron links car seventh in what is by the way another hotly contested class we're here at the moment it's gonna be another three minute stop and go for a second car the race one two three as we're on board now with the number 41 in the uh in the gte am class harry tinkle leads the way one point five seconds ahead in the 77 delta proton car of marco sorenson the etf sport car and nikki team 1.5 seconds behind that in the northwest amr 98. that's three drivers to country with as we get into the final 40 minutes of this race blue sky behind the pit lane grandstands big dark clouds in other directions though we could go raining again and one of the am class ferraris staying out of the way of the gt pro class cars that's the 71 i think i think you're right that is the spirit of race car frank de zorto oh he does have a bar where he can't avoid it he's trying to stay on the racing line do what you're supposed to do which is not very away from the racing line and cause problems being pedantic here he did overtake him off the track yeah on the exit of cou on i saw the car go all four wheels over the white line and his desperation battle this is lee battling gta all right together together and don't forget those aston martins driven by the dane train two former teammates and good buddies marco sorenson and behind him nikki team and harry tingle having taken over the dempsey proton car from sebastian prio his multimatic teammate those two keeping themselves very firmly race ready for what comes next year with lmdh and here is the battle for second in gte pro the ferrari now under the kosh antonio fuoco not sure how long he's been in the car but he's been a mighty long stint run here a great run he's going to be tempted to try and pull a move down the inside into the source but it is wet there and that's why the ferrari ducks out to defend but he thinks better off it does christensen now he's focusing on the run through this is great stuff yeah christensen needs to be cautious there because don't forget what kevin ester did in the very first corner of the race by diving to the inside in the dry there so yeah he's not going to take any of those chances he knows he's got the pace probably to win this race meanwhile united goes back to second place in the mp2 yes it is phil hansen and he is 29 seconds behind wrt's renee rash but he's up to second place hanson has become quite the charger hasn't he from a young guy starting out with united he is a real pro driver goes by philip ferdi habsburg [Music] we've seen that so many times this race ferdie habsburg is there uh race director wants to see the team manager for the number 21a of course a car with immediate effect simon mann in this battle by the way uh uh that we know the glick announces on inters as well that is falling off from the lmp2 battle now yeah 2 15 last time around from roma dumas against two 11's and two ahead yeah 213 and 214 for pachito lopez in the toyota matteo vasuvier in the alpine 213 and 211 for phil hansen in second and rene rast in the lead in lnp2 [Music] fastest car on track in spa front kesha last time round united auto sports phil hanson second in lmp2 and he was slower than he might have been because you're being held up by the race-leading toyota which is going slower than him as he was trying to unlap himself meanwhile the battle for second in gte pro well whatever craziness has gone in the five hours before now we're going to have a real grandstand finish and here yes hanson now back behind ferdie habsburg and that's what happens when these wretched toyotas get in your way for the trouble waiters are in the way of the aston martins that are battling for the leading gtm as well by the way remember all the way through free practice it was the second sector there was a it was troublesome for the totals in ideal conditions if they've got tires that are going off that's where the trouble is going to come habsburg goes right and then sees that's where the aston is headed and goes left through to goes phil hanson that was tightened and it seemed from his aerial shot inside the car trust me that was uh a closing gap on the kink before blanchemont so hanson's got the faster car he's overtaken once before but he's off on to the wet stuff and losing time hand over fist here yeah overdriving a little bit they've caught the toter and look at the toyota calm catch the aston martin oh the porsche in front that is harry tingle that's the gtm class leader who has actually opened up a bit of an advantage because the astons were being held up by the toyota and 30 absolutely but you won't because the the toyota's making up his time in a straight line and now they're both going to be stuck he goes on to the wet stuff does jose maria lopez that was brave after what happened in sebring to him as well you know you can't think that he would have taken a bit more cautiously but no pachito has got cajones the size of cantaloupes i mean he probably doesn't operate in the same way as a lot of drivers and goes back through and that again was just going down into a rouge as the toyota fought its way by that was 30 absolutely getting held up and delayed a little lose momentum before you go in on that bill all here unfold so the toyota's got the speed in that hypercar category to get past the porsche habsburg has to wait and the momentum is with the car behind of hanson watch them go through the wobble at the top of a route up the hill did he lose his momentum a bike rider you know how how much that will kill you losing momentum as you try to climb a hill answer the question off worker by the way is that team the 52 team split the race in half so he's been in since the midway point so he's been in now almost two and a half hours in the car since one of several uh many many full course yellow safety car periods and back with the battle for second place antonio michael christensen in the porsche such a good fight oh look he's got a brilliant run there on the exit of the first corner and the ferrari comes out they make contact as the ferrari goes over to the right hand side it's going to be neck and neck towards rouge he's trying to force him over onto the wet stuff and he makes it through not the first car the 92 porsche has made contact with in turn one the last time it was the 91 portion at this time [Laughter] there you go this is it again you've got an amazing run through their first contact yeah like star trek he tries to push him over onto the wet here look but he's having none of it he's gonna have some of that but they keep cutting away too early i want to see the action well that's because they wanted to show us what was happening at the top of the hill in wall unrolled johnson's [Music] well it's been a crazy crazy race it's gonna be a crazy crazy fish willow and frustrated there uh [Music] he didn't go off there watching what was happening as well you know what happened there the toyota's having go so slowly on those intermediate tires we see the alpine changing to the slicks that it caught out the car behind of hanson [Music] they can still come in and change tyres and they'll stay but still be okay because the alkene obviously have to refuel as well yeah on the alpine armpit lane with new tyres now they can go to the end on fuel from here jota under pressure from glickenhaus so the glickenhaus of roman dumas has also gone by phil hanson courtesy of that spin whoa and the porsche off porsche recovering there from an off track excursion all the way around the outside of blanchima was that the lmp2 car coming through is that the premier car or the wrt cars that's running yeah and that's it's still one two three and gte pro are still in the same camera that that battle is not dropping them away from the leader in class the 51 car is not getting away there is the 51 then the wrt car then the 52 of antonio fuco let's not forget by the way a first year factory driver yeah pro class against michael christensen a previous world champion yep he's playing a great read going around that's a fantastic action so just to recap toyota lead on intermediates that leave them uh slower by the camera five seconds than the lmp2 leader look at the penske car to the outside then the inside the inside there he's got the place again hanson's lost another place yeah i wonder if hanson's tires weren't at the right pressure and here come second and third nose to tail in gtm the porsche's just gone through and back on the inside is he got room on the exit here comes the cutback for the penske [Music] by the way totally on pit lane felipe nasa elbowing his way alongside side by side again huge huge kudos to phil hansen for handling that and to felipe nasa they were hands width apart and monies as well to actually get their momentum to get right in the tail of the glickenhaus felipe albuquerque is dying the death of a thousand cuts right now isn't it so is everybody else in the united garage and get out of the way with your wretched hyper car i've got a car to attack yeah he's trying to get back they know that was a good move i fully expected him to run wide there off the track but he has now got the bit between the teeth right phil no more mistakes come on caught you out before it's tell his pitstop that's out of the way you've got the speed he should be the fastest car on the track yeah use it look at the glickenhaus look that's really not happy is it i don't know what they've done with tyre pressures but it's not got the grip that you'd want on a slick but felipe nasa's all over him like a rash and it's so frustrating when you catch a car that's faster in the straight line and considerably faster but you can see they're on the inferior tyre well get to a situation right here and you can't out drag that car it's going to come back at you look as you come towards belongs tomorrow it's yeah and you have to leave him with the bitter wet track the glickenhaus is back on slicks i know it was the alpine that changed so the clicking is the clicking house still on intermediate yeah it is the glick announced went to slicks before anybody else and now it's on the wrong tire again still on the intermediate this is the gtm leader with the two cars side by side behind and it's this time through goes to penske erica well he's got the grip hasn't it and and you know again the wrong tire on the glickenhaus they gambled on so they didn't download slicks it was a misheard radio conversation they went on the slicks thinking that that was one recommended here's the battle for second and again the ferrari hangs on antonio fuco michael christensen must be chewing the steering wheel in frustration every time he gets alongside it just doesn't happen 27 minutes to go there's the top three in gte pro in the same picture yeah do we get 27 minutes plus one lap like we've had in the carrera cup races because it all seems to go off there as well if he can just get past fuoco we really have got a race for the win all the way to the end of this one but he's just yeah focus just playing the perfect team game right now isn't he just keeping that buffer keeping the fastest car in the gta pro category behind top three covered by just under 1.7 seconds it's very very close unfortunately for corvette racing and tommy milner they are out of it they're a lot behind again it has not been their race topsy turvy and it's gone away from them again [Music] well james collado is our race leader at least for the moment and they of course while he is and he's having his nominative 20 minutes in the car let's hear from his teammate alessandro pierguidi hello sandra obviously watching the action intently there uh it's been a it's been a good race for you i was talking to the team during those conditions and they were saying that you were trying to push it as far as you could to stay out on slicks yeah i try i try really hard to stay as much as i could but but yeah it was really difficult and we didn't know exactly how much rain would was gaming so we tried to stay out but at the end i didn't pay we have to fight fit and we lost a lot especially in the first white flag because we didn't have their way by after the other start of the car then i catch the other the lead after the second round the pace was good but they are now with the dry condition the porsche is very quick at the end we didn't expect it to be there it's still 20 minutes to go and it will be very long and we know the the difference in terms of pace of the porsche so we try our best we knew that just a strange race can help us at the end we are in the lead 25 minutes tomorrow we will be very difficult but we are we'll be there for sure in a dry condition we wouldn't be there so [Music] didn't we the porsche moving through into second place as ironically ferrari back marker traffic gets in the way he had to go down the inside but look he ran out onto the wet stuff did fuco and that allowed christensen through on the inside the swing shot he read it beautifully he did behind this pair and overtaking uh the ferrari as well as the premier car for position could that be the pick that uh proves the difference between now the 51 and the 92 on track is the number nine kramer car in the 11th spot 36 coming through it's 24 seconds is the league gap but the alpine is losing time to the league block being caught by renee rest james collado by the way 1.1 seconds ahead of the porsche that's 51 and 92 in uh in gt bro here is the alpine 25.4 seconds back both it and the toyota on slick time very slow car wrt real team what's going on or is that the outgoing pro that's the algorithm okay because uh wrt have their two cars in the top two wrt lead with 31 real team by wrt 41 in sec big moment for renee rest across the water dips to fight another day there that was a proper get out of jail card moment wasn't it that was all locked up it goes quiet inside the car your heart's in your mouth you think where's this gonna go please slow down enough i can stay on the dry line oh that was uh such a tough moment for him yeah but he handled it well didn't he and so did van sam voss here's our gte am leader here's our gt em second place there's our gte am third place do we need any of our classes to get any more exciting nikki team outbreaks himself rather than marco sorenson rejoins right behind there's phil hansen behind them as well is under 23 united either way it's one of the united cars wanted to come through harry tinkle marcos and nikki team that is your lead battle and those two astons qualified where was the 77 car on the group about fourth or fifth i think so it was it was at least fifth yeah so these cars all well up in qualifying and what a great race they are producing all the way to the chequered flag 23 minutes to go lead battle in gte pro separated by 0.5 per second yellow flags at turn nine moment lead battle in gtm between first and third place is two seconds 0.3 seconds though that gap for the lead this is the gap for gt pro someone's in trouble at turn nine oh please don't be another safety car or full course yellow full course yellow is one thing safety cars when the interception he's been into the barrier as well there's damage to that car i did fear when i saw nine pop up on our screen there that there's going to be a car in the barrier either side of the track well it's going to be at the very least a full course yellow there is debris and there is damage through that car that's been in backwards so here comes the gap it is now down to a passing maneuver and he's got to get it done now before the full course yellow comes out surely they're nowhere near turn nine there and he gets a good run on the exit of the source not gonna make anything happen before we go full course yellow it's gonna happen it's not gonna happen at all he's not close enough is he well he's close enough but you can't overtake [Music] suck up the ferrari in the slip stream and be right on his back bumper under full course yellow full course yellow full course yet well there you go now they are as close as can be right in front is the iron dame's ferrari and uh that's dorian pat at the wheel of that car right this has to be the fastest recovery job known to weck there you go there is a relief of pressure [Music] look at the steam coming off those tyres we talk about hot tyres anthony i mean they are hot hot tires those are running the surface temperature around 90 degrees celsius uh the answer on total is no yeah the answer for glickenhaus as we can see is yes and the answer for the alpine is no no they didn't need fuel okay so they don't need to come in although toyota thought maybe they might 32 seconds is the gap and click in house will still be should they finish the race and they should finish the race third in hypercar hyper car but they will not be on the overall podium 28 jota still they're trying to rebuild the front end of the car to get it drivable to classify as a finisher and right now that car is yeah 14 laps behind the leaders so what are what can still be decided as they've got uh intervention in place well what comes to can still be decided is the overall win yes toyota versus alpine looks like the balance is pretty much in toyota's favor we don't know uh the podium in lmp2 can still be decided i'm absolutely up for grabs is the race in gtu pro because there's the lead gap and yeah and um absolutely so the gap in am first to third was first a second 0.9 second to third 2.9 so 3.8 seconds covers the top three um and remember too whilst we do have a reasonable gap for the lead in lmp2 there is still a matter of an investigation uh for full course that's gtem that's first and second correct right there harry take marco sorenson and third just coming into it that's a good arm wrestling gt pro and the red ferrari and the white porsche the gap isn't much bigger in gte pro either is it it's now oh a warming flag for car 52 for the contact with car 92 at turn two so that side-by-side contact was a judged unfair yeah he did come over at him didn't he on the exit of the source we saw it the ferrari moved to the right there was contact um through turn two i mean no harm was done but just maybe the the stewards felt it was a little bit too unsporting 31 on bit lane and out again from the lead in lmp2 there's the 35 ultimate car uh currently sitting third in lmpt the lmp2 program we've not said a lot about that we'll say a little under full course yellow despite that three minutes stop and go as the premier team go to work the af quarter car still retained the lead as they managed to serve their three minutes and two away goes to 56 so we're gonna get back pretty soon uh as long as this thing doesn't drop debris that's the key now right so we've had cars from lmp2 making fuel stops everybody pretty much stopped on the last but one full course yellow and that's when everybody went on to slicks real team on pit road now the other one that's come out definitely have to come in here 38 car yeah and what about 22 for united looking down surely they all need it's tight i think they can make it oh united might end up winning this then because the others in front of them are stopping there's 41. wrt world they do get almost that free stop look at this battle gte pro nose two tail waiting as we are under full course yellow and now a lot of our lmp2 front runners in from third place comes the 38 jota car wrt and real team have stopped from first and second in lmp2 and davidson this is going to be 10 minute dash for the cash isn't it yeah absolutely i'm just seeing that's will stevens in the pits there for the fuel stop obviously keeping the same tires on but is he going to get jumped in yes he is going to get jumped um no hudson's pitted has he pitted as well yeah they all pitted at the same time with over an hour to go they can't do an hour that was when no no no i mean hanson's pitted after 12 laps right will stevens has just completed a 20-lap stint they were obviously out of the sink then there's handsome uh trading blows with a 42 car handsome i was sure he was going to jump stephens there unless he's got a tyre problem it just seems that maybe i mean if you do a three lap and a full lap it means there's something up with the fuel and that was the big moment there for phil hanson that was a big mistake he'll really kick himself for that one um but he's caught out by the toyota but should be prepared for that the uh the only door on the 23 car opens that can yeah that's only job is staying aboard the car this is their final fuel stop that way they will go big section porsche in the pits there the project one car brendan iribe so it is back in the pit lane we are still under full course yellow is that to allow the entire field to stop for fuel if they need to does happen occasionally that's just the risk you take as a team you uh you know you get winners and losers in the safety car or four course yellow periods in which case is there a little bit of barrier damage down there on the excellent term nine that they are having to work on or is uh is our race director waiting for a vehicle to reposition itself back to its uh normal starting position you know all of these things take a little bit of time and need to be done we've not had our usual 30 to 60 second warning of going back yet no it would be warning flag we've seen is the contact we saw down towards here we go so he loses control he's gone down the inside of the laps car and then thinks oh no you don't it's just like saying no harm done [Music] bodywork drivers being forced off track it's uh it's it's good fun to watch you gotta say see the pink car oh wait wait isn't it well i was thinking about this the other red car yeah is it where is and it did catch the uh the iron dame's car i think it's a strategical move you don't say but yeah from james colada he doesn't want to get jumped by the porsche when it goes green but you know that are you going to catch the iron dame's car somewhere unfortunate anyway well if you give a gap if you've tried to engineer the spot sod's law says yes yes you will they will go green just as you're going down to in into a rouge and you will there the key point here is whilst there is a maximum speed under full course yellow there's not a minimum no and we noticed actually we were on board with the porsche suddenly the ferrari came back towards us okay yeah right yeah it's good it's clever though what the game that uh collado is playing there he just wants to give himself again like they do at the start of the race yes uh every time we see the gt's just dropping back a little bit they give themselves oh they're in their own race to give themselves a bit of a breathing space and that's what he's doing no because you're not allowed to let the gap grow behind the safety car you've got to keep up with the minimum speed and not open up gaps but talk about gaps closing well that hasn't that closed right on the window didn't it so marco sorenson there in the 33-4 horseman aston martin in second place and harry tinkle was last time tinkerbell won in wec oh that's a good question yeah can i kind of understand the phrase i like to use in these circumstances it's ht leads [Laughter] yeah it's going to be it's going to be interesting it is going to be a 10-minute dashboard at best i think was it last year the year before harry became one of a very exclusive club to start uh them on in all four major classes when he made his first uh gtm start for proton well in that case he is obviously missing a trick and hasn't got himself into garage 56 entry yet there you go he's not risked hypercar yet that will not be long coming i'm absolutely certain oh dear that's better really how was that under full course yellow it's that's not pissed out by the way that's that's on track that's happened that that car was not in pit lane who's in the one car that's she just lost it on she's losing uh leaving the pit lane no she wasn't no it wasn't no she wasn't no she's looped it around pit lane entries further down than that no there it is yeah yeah actually ended up in the pit lane she did but yeah lost it on the racing line i did like how the marshals were mansplaining to what you needed to do there uh you don't want to stop there now not only is the iron dame's car a little further up the road from james collado than he was but of course hang on as he slows back down yes um did you notice how much closer yes really how much closer his teammate is antonio foco so what do you mean there's another ferrari that's right behind the portion now it's it's getting closer apparently there's definitely an anomaly with james collado's uh speed limiter it's really no love lost after bahrain i thought there was such close push to pass we're going back well look there's uh there's your lead battles in both gt classes pro on the left he's been removed he's got him has got no drive just oh he was saved by the bell there wasn't he just because there was nowhere to go at turn nine but the porsche certainly had the grip antonio foco right behind can he put pressure on to save victory for ferrari yellow's a up but he might even fancy a one two what about the am cars he's had a shocker already there distancing themselves from him but they are going to they are going to catch the iron dame's car at the bus stop under yellows and christensen if he could take his hands off the wheel would be rubbing them with glee here and harry tingle has got the hammer down ahead of marco sorenson nikki team in the background third place in the other aston the northwest amr cup not able to close either nine minutes to go this is now definitely in porsche territory this weather more so than ferrari we heard from alessandro greedy it's going to be a long 25 minutes to hang on you can see kevin estra praying now that his teammate michael christensen can bring home the victory and somehow make everybody forget his complete horlicks of the first corner where he took his own teammate out of the race harry tickle is really tight on fuel really tight hey he's used to racing he's really wide there christensen way off he got onto the wet stuff mid corner through turn three and properly off the track yeah but he couldn't pass and although both of them were off he loses more ground he had more of a moment there look at the top speeds 260 261 260 260 miles an hour uphill he's got a great run through here though he made up for that mistake throughout rouge to be back on the rear end of that ferrari as they head down the hill towards turn eight brussels we just look at the penske and united heading down towards rouge felipe nasser ahead of philippe hanson and he's got the toe has he got enough to get the slingshot to go by nasa's trying to cover the inside hanson's going late he's going deep he's going on the web nasa can't get it stopped hanson really can't get it stopped thumps over the curb has to give the place back does so but he's going to have a gung-ho attempt isn't he i've never seen him you know pushed so hard to watch more europeans he is fighting yeah and uh we've seen him put in some iron man stints as well but this i i'd agree with you this is a bit of a coming of age stint from him yeah here we go for the lead for the win christensen still trying to get by i tell you what this is going to be an epic last 10 minutes if james collada can somehow hang on so he's got the traction on the exit of turn 19. if you can just set himself up properly here get a good run but collado gets a good run too don't think he's gonna be close enough down towards the source this time they both run out too wide and it is wet on the inside at last source it's very wet on the inside in the braking area isn't it it's everybody's twitching everybody's got the christian hornet he was airborne turbulent air yeah but the car in front is kicking up and he can't quite get close enough through o'rouge or oblong i think he has all four wheels off he's creating his own bump they've ironed them out he's making his own ones it's starting to get dark by the way over in the distance um i'm not hoping that anything else happens this is traffic coming gonna be an entertaining end to the race but they've got the traffic at the ferrari in front and they've got the prema lmp2 car catching them from behind from desoto pulls out of the way but again the porsche gets close so it's ferrari porsche ferrari and in fourth place corvettes the 91 porsche in fifth but not able to make up even one position from that early shot courtesy of kevin est broken the toe a little here further away and look it's dry there and it's not bumpy christensen is ragging this car with more than it's got here comes the premier car that's going to break this battle up for a short while at least and so often in the gt cars it's a faster car that affects the bat okay think back to the last lap in bahrain it was a faster car that caused all the carnage that created that incident so the p2 car is going to overtake the porsche here will he get the ferrari i think he will just before blanchamon he's going to be tight though he's going to go around the outside exactly he has to because if he wakes to the bus stop he's going to park it and the ferrari will have to stop dead early because the p2 car will stop much later and much more suddenly look at the porsche on the brakes better in the slow speed better traction on the exit this one but i do think unless some traffic gets in the way or collado makes a mistake i think he's making that ferrari wide enough to win this and tingle is pulling away in second place marco sorensen is now half up how far back two points two seconds plus and also sorensen is pulling away from team yes he is so harry tingle is making this into a gtm potential win for the 77 dempsey proton car in his second fourth race christian reed could claim another victory in gtam in wec [Music] so here again comes christensen tidier that time but not fast enough ferrari's got long legs up this hill this is his penultimate chance i think to try the move into the calm that depends where the light is everywhere where the leader is they might just get to the line ahead of the leader and get one more left than the leader yellows are out that's the inception car and it's cooked steaming at the back and now that's probably not for being on the damn ground yeah but he goes out wide there every lap again right on the ragged edge there so is the porsche though look up here the paws have not got the front end that it was i said is that fluid down from the 56 car i'm not sure renee rast leading in lmp2 we sort of forgotten about that but wrt now back to 1-2 in lmp2 wrt ahead of real team by wrt jotus will stevens in third in the 38th car and oh my lord that is the number 31 hitting uh that's the ultimate shot yeah it's the only other red and white car left because the premier car has been uh shunted into oblivion hasn't it that's the 41 car i think behind the car is still going there it is fixed remember yeah they did under full courtyard where's [Music] well now this might be an overtaken move into turn 18 which could scuffle the plans of james collado because there's a big get on with it get on with it he's going come on come on come on get off the brakes hurry up hurry up hurry up doesn't hold up colorado the porsche closes as it usually does look at the sky though that's what we're looking at we're at the end of the pit building looking out at that sky that's just cruising by the end of the circuit the overall leader is in the final sector with two minutes on the clock it will be this lap and wobble yeah but he can't make the overtake into lacombe at turn five because there's a yellow there anyway all the way through to the exit of that section yeah yeah oh here he comes again all over the kerbs he's gonna end up with a track limits penalty if he's not careful that's three consecutive laps so collado can take a bit of a breather here and just focus on the exit of turn seven yeah he'll know that so yellows are there he knows that he can't catch him as well from lakom up he knows that the porsche can't get close enough to make it there but he's down here it's out of rivage out of brazil that he could be in trouble again it's so still so down there on fresh tarmac neither car is exactly what you're going to get final lap so penultimate time down the hill here into pual nice and dry if you're on the line horrendous if you're not and look at the way the back of the ferrari slides under james collado he doesn't care just has to last one more lap he is doing a masterful job here of defensive driving i mean and chris he's just sucking up the nerves yeah it's impressive stuff christensen added hammer and tongs and of course james was the one who was on the pit wall watching the final lap in bahrain as it all transpired with alessandro pierguini in the car now he's in that position not chasing but soaking up the pressure is going to get both of them here and he wants to he wants to try and close on 30 habsburg it's only seven seconds it might be the last lap he can't go around compromise the line of the ferrari because he can't use all the spacers okay so even stevens oh it is even will stephens now is he gonna shoot down the inside here is it dry enough for him to outbreak the ferrari yes it is he just about gets the dry line but the ferrari can't keep the door shut luckily for james camardo the porsche michael christensen was not quite close enough toyota are going to take their sixth consecutive win in the six hours of sparta fraukesha the chicken flag is out and against all the odds it is the number seven toyota that wins it mike conway and jose maria lopez take victory the first toyota win of the season and alpine's matcha vasivir the sebring winners will come home in second place here's our gte am leader harry tingle christian reed started the car sebastian prio did the middle stint and it's been tinkerbell who hangs on at the end leaving the challenge of the aston martins well not quite trailing in his wake but just opening up enough to make it a little bit less fraught than in gte pro he will take victory in the am class for the dempsey proton racing team tf sports marco sorensen is right behind him and for north west amr it is third for nikki team and let's get back to wrt with renee rast about to take victory in lmp2 a one-two coming up for wrt with real team and still we're waiting for the action in the gt pro class top three top three are together on the final lap in gt bro right with him they've got held up by somebody so sean gale robin friends and renee rest are winners it will be a 1-2 for wrt with real team coming to line 30 habsburg in second will stevens in third and here is the gt pro battle all of the pressure soaked up by james collado this is world champion versus world champion reigning world champion versus former world champion michael christensen now back in the gt pro lineup it's a last lap lunch it's not collard shuts the door he can't go outside inside he runs onto the weight does he get second yes antonio foco can't get close enough the one two three in the line covered by the proverbial pocket handkerchief that was a silverstone style finish what a finish to the race one two three covered by 1.2 seconds after six hours of unbelievable craziness here at spa yes i love that racing that was brilliant class driving from all three drivers there at the end in the gt pro category collado holding his nerve hanging on to that victory he was not going to let that one go really impressive drive and i loved how they fought right to the end that final chicane the porsche was at its closest it's been all race into there and just the way i loved watching how they placed their cars into that and i thought maybe christensen overcooked it a bit got on the wet stuff and fuoco got involved as well but yeah great i think that was that was proper professional racing there absolutely talk about sensory overload you've got michael christopher anything he possibly could do to win the race he's slowing you pick up pick up isn't he yeah he's picking up everything but he also will have realized that second place was up for grabs as well yeah because franco was right there by the way magnificent race for antonio for a young man coming into the gto pro squad against competition like that astonishing stuff from him brilliant stuff what a crazy race spa you have done it again unbelievable well right long before the race started right at the beginning of our broadcast i said this track is not just a classic circuit because it's been around a long while it's a classic circuit because ant every time you come you expect craziness like this and close racing like this and look at it yeah that's what it means to a driver to to get through mixed conditions like this jose maria lopez as well go some way to redeem himself from sebring a great the thing with jose he never does he he doesn't hang his head for long after a mistake like that that he had in sebring and yeah a great drive from them yeah fully back in the game now it's more than reset after sebring and with the with the failure of car eight i do feel sorry for them sebastian bueny and the rest of the car crew there better still as we get the cars coming down pit lane towards the podium they're going to be greeted on the podium for the victory by a full grandstand people stayed for this despite the challenges people stayed that grandstand i would estimate still 80 percent fall you know and it's only eighty percent fall because people have spread out it stopped raining to be watching all the way down the pit straight and again you know that big new grandstand what a bonus for the fans today particularly for four hours where the weather was well yeah let's hold this race in the church all sort of material uh that that big new grandstand up up at uh of looking at rouge that was absolutely a big boom for the fans so at sebring it was the other totals to to have sorry see if it was this time just turned down the troubles here it was the number eight it's a very mixed season so far for toyota yep excellent race though for the number seven kept their heads the alpene not quite there today no but if it had remained mixed longer they might well have been actually 31 wrt last year they came here off the back of a very successful start to the european le mans series and just sort of misfired all of the little things that can trip you up sort of did this year no mistake this year all the pace this year all the composure in the cockpit and on the pit wall and a one-two the real team car that they also run finished in second place there's sean galileo yeah he drove a great race at the start you know in the dry he held off the drivers trying to get by at the beginning you know faster drivers with a with a better seed uh in in their category he's just a silver driver don't forget and uh yeah he's hung in there he's really happy with himself with the whole team's performance but i must say a master class of a performance by robin friends in those treacherous conditions uh lapping faster than any other car on circuit at times brilliant stuff by all three of them well deserved victory first win in the world championship race for sure gale after winning the uh asian among series title this year so he and robin feins catch a lift their doors open with no dramas it's our final man of the trio rene rast and uh harry tingle bringing in the gte winning dempsey proton porsche sharing with sebastian prior and for prio his first win as well in a world endurance championship race of course prio and tignal have raced together on a number occasions before in the wec but that time it was andy prio and harry tingle in the ford gt that were the team and now it is well father is watching back home in guernsey son is the man who'll stand on the top step of this famous podium and boy really taught him everything he knew alexandria pierre guidi did all the easy bit and handed over the high-pressure job to james gallardo at the end didn't he doing nearly four hours in the car in those yeah unbelievable mixed conditions and if callado thought that was the hard part he was absolutely wrong because his part was just as hard i never thought we were going to see number 51 ferrari rock up there with the race winners today in each category unbelievable we have lost our shirt i think oh yeah oh yeah and did you notice that both of them have got their regular helmet designs but with gold as the world champions they didn't do that a couple of years ago when they won before but i noticed when they swapped over alley has got a big swathe of gold on his helmet you can see there that james does as well talk about sean galil you're completely corrected he's indeed his first wc class win although uh he's had a a run of eight races in the wec seven of which including this one he's been on the podium that's impressive isn't it i mean that is his second place of course last year yeah yeah he drove really well there yeah wow never expected those two i'm not sure they did either it around isn't it i'll start with you kamui yeah yeah i'm very happy i mean tim did a great job uh it was a very difficult race but of course guys greyjoy with no mistake i think we did a really great race it's really a shame for kaye i think we needed investigate for what happened but for sure for the team i deserve it and thanks for a big support and i'm very happy here with big fans here around and i'm looking forward for them now that's my next question i mean look at those fans they're still here you have troubles in the car but i mean look they've stayed it through yeah great to have all the fans here today it's been you know look it's been like a full house we haven't seen that for a little while so it's uh it's glad it's like that we can't wait for lebron as well it's a good memento for us uh sorry for karate that they had their issues but um yeah keep pushing try and get another one of them up jose maria just quickly and that's what you wanted to do isn't it yeah definitely um sometimes you need a bit of luck but yeah these guys get a message of the team also they work very hard i'm very sorry for callie or sister gaba yeah we keep we keep pushing we are back in business and it was good to jump in the car and feel again you know with a good confidence so thank you very much everyone and it was fantastic to have the people back in here thank you well done [Music] in sunshine ready for the start of the total energy six hours of spa round two of the fia world endurance championship with a huge crowd in attendance and huge anticipation this track always produces something special and first of all it produced an american team on the outright pole position clicking house topping qualifying and leading the field away olivier platt holding the lead under challenge from the alpine of andre negrow but trouble for the 91 porsche that had qualified on pole got hit by the 92 car lost a tire on the very first corner they were out of contention from there on in well safety car came out on lap one clicking house led but by the end of the first hour toyota were all over them first sebastian buemi going through and then before the end of the same lap mike conway going inside outside and around the houses to take second place away from olivier platt trouble was in store though for miro canopica the alc bratislava car spat off the kerbs and hard into the barriers driver okay car wrecked safety car led to red flag because of rain and the need to rescue the bratislava car at the first restart the number eight toyota decided it had not had enough of the day and parked itself another red flag more wet weather then back to green flag conditions the race leader was wrt trouble again bringing out full course yellow and where that ends up for alex brundle it meant the barriers for the inter-europol car and again another red flag for weather back to racing once more the tracks starting to dry a little toyota coming through to take the lead from wrt the lmp2 leader then passed by the glickenhaus that moved up to second place and finally by the alpine to make itself up to third and sebastian bourdain one of those to find a gravel in tricky conditions not the only one though going off the road and into the barriers and that would need a trip to the pit lane and as the conditions started to improve simon manns ferrari dropping into the gravel forcing another full course yellow for rescue not the only one to have problems jonathan abedin putting the 28 jota car into the barriers he got it back to the pitch but it would never leave again and then the final caution just before the final 20 minutes brendan reed for inception our class winners under real pressure from two aston martins harry tignall for dempsey proton under massive pressure for half an hour from the porsche it was the ferrari of james collado who took the flag wrt going one two renee rust claiming victory in lmp2 and the number seven toyota jose maria lopez took it to the flag at the head of the field toyota's seventh win at spa their sixth in succession i think it speaks uh volumes of the quality of racing that we did get martin that the weather and the interruptions didn't spoil it as much as it otherwise could there is the overall results number seven from the 36th the two hypercars leading the field wrt on the overall podium with a 31 car and heading lmp2 end of the sister 41 the real team by wrt car and joker sports 38. that was a great gte program look at the gaps half a second and seven 1.2 seconds between the three and by the way it was five hours in the car from kevin michael christensen that's just a 72 car 51 from 92 52 and a great finish from harry tank will defend off the pressure from marco sorenson and nikki team in gtm dempsey proton 77 porsche head of the 33 and 98 aston martins from tf sport northwest amr lest we forget lmp2 pro am goes to the af course at 83 orica that despite a three-minute stop-and-go penalty that they were fortunate they managed to serve under a full course yet but they started from pole position in the class as well okay rick there in the uh winners room sure he's been there more than once but audi have won four times on this track in world endurance championship history antonio felix de costa coming in having a chat with dr ulrich so to roberto gonzalez the jota sport car finishing third in lmp2 with real team by wrt in second and wrt in first place but what an end to the race for ferrari they said their only chance was if it rained boy they took that chance with both hands and gte am again a fantastic battle to the end wrt always look like they might have what it took to win here in lmp2 and so improved and toyota the number seven car or claims sixth consecutive win here in ten starts their seventh in total but only their first win of this year so sebring victory for alpine the first non-toyota to win in the hypercar era back to their winning ways here in what is effectively always the shake down for lemon they'll have been using their full lemon low drag spec bodywork wrt coming out first not because we're doing the lmp2 podium first but because they are in third place over all with his back to us sean galel in the center there robin fryes getting ready for the penalty wall and robin uh renee russell realized when he rash was actually taller than his teammate he's not sure would be the tallest of the three but really rustic would appear he's taller than sean gale they're putting in a cracking display there but for me robin franz was stella stella absolutely amazing stuff from him it'll be by the way uh the second uh class win in wc history for renee rast after bahrain in 2016 uh he scored a podium of course first round of this season that's the first overall podium for renee oh there you go that was which will mean of course that with the win in sebring they will retain the world championship lead absolutely and a first victory for the crew of car number seven kobayashi comes out last the team director to join disappointment in sebring [Music] winners of the 11th fia world endurance championship race at spa franchise toyota their sixth consecutive win they won here first with nico lapierre sebastian bremi and anthony davidson back in 2014 audi then fought back in 15 and 16. but since 2017 when kwemi nakatima and again anthony davidson playing victory they have been undefeated here that's an enviable record because not only is it a tough race track to win in with everything that we've seen today being a microcosm of everything that we always see here but also because it is so important to run your le mans spec car because this is a proper test it's not a testing test it's a real test and so you're always a bit compromised when you come here because you're not running necessarily the ideal car for this track so against all comers against audi against porsche they have produced the goods here at spa and that always bodes well for them they have the latter part of that race something of a race to the flag something who raised survival for the total nowhere close to the kind of pace the car was capable of in those changing conditions does make you wonder what a mixed weather le man might bring yep well as we know uh thanks to truth in 24 and history it always rains at le mans always always runs anymore and yeah i mean it explains in the mind it doesn't always rain a lot sometimes it really does rain a lot we've seen some crazy weather at le mans over the years crazy hot crazy wet crazy everything we've seen plenty of that here today well the drivers universally were approving of the reintroduction of gravel traps here to spar from they said it will make it more difficult to make those passes in traffic to to pass traffic cleanly to pass rivals cleaning and so it proved it when the rain came it meant that we had more delays but we had an epic race nonetheless under underground machiavellian nico lapierre are our points leaders from olivier platt and roman duma brendan hartley lying in third with rio hiroka and sebastian buemi and their teammates jose maria lopez camus kobayashi mike conway two points behind them now fourth position but they have got points on the board alpine lead toyota by five points in the fia world endurance championship manufacturer standings with glickenhaus in third and we are still awaiting the arrival of the next of the new generation of prototypes i'm going to start with james because the end of that race was just epic yeah it was really tough and i knew the 92 was a bit quicker i was struggling with the tires we chose a soft compound and risked everything but yeah what a race i mean it was really fair i have to say to them and um you know close close racing and i just thought i'd enjoyed it finally we you know we went over the line together with a split second wasn't expected but honestly alley did an amazing job he was in the car four and a half hours um so uh yeah fair play to him well done you and for you in the car you did a great job as james says but for you to watch on it must have been so nerve-wracking i was so difficult to watch the race so difficult still can't believe how we won this race because we know we did we need like a crazy race inspired always the reserve something special and we are here so james did an incredible job in the last few laps but was so nervous it was worse than stay in the car i think it's much worse to watch the race than stay in the car but at the end we are here and i'm really happy for for us for of course we did an incredible job this weekend well deserved go and enjoy it thank you [Music] this place produces remarkable racing and remarkable results and there was another remarkable race in the end despite the mistake of kevin s the 92 porsche managed to make it onto podium they very nearly ended up winning it but ferrari get first and third there's still needle there's still needle without a doubt is there and kristen snapping a grump yep [Music] so victory for our reigning champions alexandria pier greedy james collado second place for the portuguese team michael christensen and kevin nest and in third place miguel molina and antonio that is fast coming together as a good combination as well this one's going to run all year as one hell of a storyline michael christensen finished the last five hours of that race i think at least in part that is going to be kevin estra beating himself up over what happened at term one yeah well everybody is human everybody makes mistakes and racing drivers human in the end sometimes you think they're a bit of a machine but everybody makes mistakes and of course he feels upset about it you know he's denied the sister car a chance to compete for an overall podium a chance to compete for the win and in the end at least porsche got one car on the podium both finished 91 car did finish fifth place rather than maybe second maybe third maybe first who knows but again the weather had a big part to play here and it definitely had a big part to play and helped ferrari kevin h michael christensen leads the point standings though by 14 over alessandro pierre guidi and james collado so it's a long chase nick tandy and tommy milner then the corvette lying in third place in the overall endurance driver's standings now those also as you can see include the drivers in the am class category because they score points there too but porsche lead ferrari in the manufacturer standings with corvette in third place corvette of course with one hand tied behind their back as they have a single car rather than two in the battle of their rivals so we have heard from our gte winners we've heard from our overall winners let's hear now from our lmp2 winners now the number 31 wrt i've got to speak to all of you because all of you put in such a great job i'll start with you sean because you started i mean that was a great drive yeah it was fun you know in the start it was still sunny so that was good um good fight with the promo car as well uh antonio checked off a bit but i think he had the box early as well so now was really fun gave the car back to roberto in p1 so that was easy and then renee didn't really have to do anything today so now it's good man no everyone did a really good job um the team did an amazing car for us and again they deserved their one-two so well done well done uh you enjoyed that didn't you i did enjoy that oh sometimes it was a bit very difficult at some occasions because of the account planning but we kept it out of the wall um so yeah really happy to stand here now and for you just to take it home i mean that was great yeah it wasn't that easy as it might looked up because i i was in two or three times on a focus yellow with cold tires in the wet outside and then in the end uh some lmp2 car just spun in front of me and i hit him so some cold brown moments over this thin but obviously very happy in the end again as we talked about earlier sometimes i mean to win you've got to have luck on your side you've got to have everything else as well but you have to have luck on your side 38 mighty 38 from joseph taking third the jack in the box there you can see habsburg for real gene by wrt and the local w racing team basically the pride of belgium a local team in every understanding of the world not just from belgium but from spa frankish they have taken a one-two result here that turned the other beats in water half a decade ago here with a one-off won it all last year and won it again today [Music] so for the belgian fans a big result such a well-known name in this country such a well-known name among these racing fans wrt they win with their banner over the car and real team by wrt claim second spot jota always in the hunt 38 car is the one that comes home in third penske fourth head of the two united cars and prema who again challenged so much to win this race and in the end a couple of offs then cameron as he said sometimes it's better to be lucky than good he got away uh with a trip across the gravel and had a pretty uh in the end adventurous stint here that's wrt the dominant force and yeah for at least a third maybe getting on for half the race it was robin fryings in that lmp2 car that was the overall race leader and if it had stayed wet it might have been our first ever overall lmp2 win we came close at lemon a few years ago and in the wet weather it definitely looked as though we could have come close once more and again we saw so many of those teams that could have finished much much higher up the order i am sure united auto sports will go away from here absolutely gutted something was going wrong with that 22 car uh in the pit stops picking far too often it's going to be the uh the 31 crew that topped the table coming through here from the 23 united auto sports pairing because of course we had a switch in the drivers there six points of difference between the two of them with that 23 car unable to open the driver's door and delaying them in the pits dropping them out of the fight and further questions to be asked about just why we saw the 22 card back on pit road so often yeah they definitely had issues but i still have a lot of racing left to go in terms of le mans and the rest of the series i've just got one question i'm going to go with harry tingle i mean where did you guys come from we were lurking the whole race i think all weekend we've had good pace um kristen did a fantastic job in qualifying the start of the race you know we were right there even though there's some pros in the car we're always like p5 p6 but we knew it was going to come to us and then uh yeah a little little um blip in the middle when it rained and then we just started coming back and then once the full course yellow safety cars came got us right back in the race and um you know we're talking at the end about whether to box for fuel or or try and risk it and i just said i stay out you know i could try and save some fuel we never know what's going to happen it could rain again and uh the full course yellow came it meant that we were safe on fuel and yeah that last stint was just crazy i mean to start with before we had it one easy i had great pace but we were on a soft tire and i think they were on the medium and so you you lose the juice up and then you start to lose but then that last full course yellow called the tyres down this first two laps were crucial you know i could see he was coming back to me and i just said look it's kind of do or die now you know win offense and uh i just had to just take maximum risk on the damp parts of the track uh use the grip where i could and then by the time he started coming back at me once my tires are starting to overheat again it was too late i said when you said look they might be a little bit questionable for fuel all of his experience of racing with jose with mazda and so on in the states he was going to gamble he was net they were never going to go safe like he said win offense it was it was that it was always going to be the the long roll of the day so in the end yeah the astons just couldn't get to them they couldn't and it was a great performance from both they're chasing aston martin's after a great sebring for them it is a win on his 74th start consecutive start for christian reid it's a first win in the wec for sebastian prior we'll talk about very tinkling [Music] i [Music] well for christian reid it's a 12th class winning wc history for christian for harry we said that during the broadcast here he's started uh le mans in all four classes he's now won races in the wec in three of them uh wins with aston martin at the moment and with ford of course the in the ewc wins in lmp2 as well and now are winning gtm there's only hypercar left what might happen next year oh i think we're pretty well aware of what might happen next year with harry tingles sebastian priya multimatic and for christian reed well he started racing back in 1996 in the bpr global gt series with his father and there is one of his young sons on the podium with him and you know the other question he has won so much in that career yeah a long career at wc he's never won the championship well maybe this might be a good year to do it it's not the opposite of paul dalana the uh one everything in wc has not won le mans christian does have a win at le mans in 2018 but has never won the wc championship and christian as far as i'm aware from day one has driven for proton competition correct yes i think as far as i'm aware every race the oh no felba mic proton proton competition abu dhabi proton racing apologies kcmg and sieber automotive uh sarah the kcmg um porsche by the way was a proton run car yeah it's also rated gt with autolando but we'll pass over that well there are the drivers standings in the uh gte uh endurance trophy it's close northwest amr leading from tf sport and dempsey proton let's hear now from our final podium finishes lmp2 pro am francois perotto francois parado you must be pleased that you've made the switch to lmp2 yeah relieved i mean two races two pole position from the kids and uh and two wins in pro am so definitely happy but it was a weird race i think a race of attrition a bit odd a lot of well yeah safety car red flags and we got that three-minute penalty which nearly killed our race so happy to still finish uh in the top step we were lucky yeah i mean do you think you're such a high from sebring i mean you've won the pro-m but do you feel a little bit like yeah it's i mean it's i think no we're definitely happy to have won the program and you know for sure this is this is the objective but i think without that penalty we could have done maybe a top five top six considering the level in the lmp2 pro that would have been amazing so fingers crossed for them thank you thank you but the car had plenty of pace didn't it i mean three minutes uh if you take three minutes away from where they finished that would have put them in that leading group it's that it's the little things that trip you up especially when the weather changes so much so third in pro-am you saw the ultimate car in second in pro-am algarve pro [Music] winners hey of course never anything other than wildly enthusiastic black and white by the way the colors of brittany [Music] putting it all together winning in gte pro and winning in lmp2 pro am as well let's talk to wolfgang alright handing out the occurs to me by the way that's their second consecutive second place in international sports go racing with the sophia flourish and ben viscalcar winning getting to the second podium spots in the mms they've had quite the start and i think they were on the podium at sebring weren't they that's a very [Music] francoise [Music] enjoying their moment at the top of the pile again francois are not really going to be happy until they win lmp2 outright they definitely have a team that can do it yep it was indeed a third place at uh sebring for i'll go pro they uh there are the points it is a 21 point gap now for the af course at trio ahead of the ultimate racing uh trio and then uh james allen rennie binder and stephen thomas just one point behind the ultimate crew with that uh difference that will have been scored through uh one point difference might be a one point difference between two of them with a second and a third each that's a very good question well because there isn't a point for um paul lots more very good questions going on here after what has been a crazy second round of the fia world endurance championship you always come to spa expecting something special and spa very rarely fails to deliver it might have had trouble getting going a couple of times for the drivers it was very hard work indeed the fans stayed and stayed and were rewarded with a fantastic finish to the race spa as ever turned on the drama and we had drama to the end in every class well that is it for spa franca shaw next time out it will be the 24 hours of le mans on behalf of all the team here for wec tv for louise beckett for graham goodwin for anthony davidson i'm martin haven saying thank you for joining us we'll see [Music] two three you

Channel: FIA World Endurance Championship

Views: 276,767

Keywords: fiawec, wec, fia wec, endurance, world endurance championship, racing, FIA WEC, FIA World Endurance Championship, World Endurance Championship, WEC racing, WEC LIVE, WEC livestream, live car racing, WEC race, Race, endurance racing live stream, livestream endurance race, motorsport race, TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa, TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa 2022, FULL RACE, Spa-Francorchamps, 6 Hours of Spa 2022, 6 Hours of Spa full race, 6 Hours of Spa 2022 full race, 6 Hours of Spa

Id: djp86qILz8M

Length: 432min 11sec (25931 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Icy-Economist-8832]

That's pretty fast, cool!

[u/That_one_guy_666]

Nearly as fast as the Glickenhaus in Quali. Nice.

[u/cabrelbeuk]

Wow not even a week after ! Thanks :)

[u/Michal_Baranowski]

That was fast. Sebring was uploaded significantly later, probably due to broadcasting deals and having IMSA's 12h-race to be uploaded first.

[u/ImmediatelyOcelot]

I'm now waiting for the compact version that they made last year! It was great.