It is said that nothing is over till the Fat Lady sings. Well, BMW must be wondering what prompted the last minute appearance of the Big Girl. With around 30 minutes to go of the 2010 Spa 24 Hours, the BMW M3 GT2 of Dirk Werner was cruising to a well deserved victory. It was not to be, a broken track rod pitched the car off the track. A slow drag back to the pits followed by 5 minutes of frenzied action by the ace Schnitzer crew got the M3 back on track, but by then two cars had sped past.
The records will show that the win goes to the BMS Scuderia Italia and their Porsche 911 GT3 RS, driven with great skill by Romain Dumas, Jorg Bergmeister, Wolf Henzler and Martin Ragginger. They completed 541 laps or 3,789 kilometres.
Just over a minute behind the Italian winners was another Porsche, that of the IMSA Performance Matmut. The crew of Patrick Long, Patrick Pilet, Richard Lietz and Raymond Narac came tantalisingly close to an outright victory at this Belgian classic.
Third place in a classic 24 Hour race is normally something that is worth celebrating but i suspect that there will be a deflated, disappointed mood in the BMW pit box. Dirk Werner, Dirk Muller and Dirk Adorf had the race covered from the first hour and managed to maintain control despite encountering the usual four season in one day weather system so often seen at Spa Francorchamps. L'Annee Prochaine?
The GT3 class win and 6th place overall went to the Mulner Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R. The driver line up of Juerger Haring, Dimitrious Konstantinou, Arnaud Peyroles and Giles Vannelet made the best of the difficult conditions, outlasting the strong opposition.
OK, I am off to the Eurotunnel and back to base in leafy Surrey, so more from the action at Belgium later.
John Brooks
OFFICIAL SPEEDHUNTERS SUPPLIERS
With driver lineups as they were, it's little surprise that Scuderia Italia and IMSA took 1-2..talk about a ton of endurance ringers!
Bad luck for the Schnitzer boys, but I guess that's endurance racing. Almost a complete reverse of fortunes from Nurburgring 24hrs (BMW- Porsche wise).
I would have loved to see the BMW win, it was well deserved. The lack of GT1's was very disappointing. The drama of the Ferrari's and the sound of the Alpina's is what made it interesting to watch at the track. Not much action besides that
TV Coverage was horrid.
Wallpaper of that first image pretty please!