After another short break, our drivers found themselves ahead of yet another challenge in this second championship season. A trip to always unpredictable, in terms of weather conditions, Spa-Francorchamps was in front of our drivers. Despite the weather forecast not looking too good for the racing weekend, we have only seen a bit of wet track running in the first part of qualifying, the rest of the racing weekend remained dry. We all know how unpredictable weather in that part of Belgium in real life can be, so we were expecting something similar, and we were left slightly disappointed at the end, one could say.
With this round of the championship, we have implemented some slight changes to the weekend format, mainly effecting qualifying, where we have decided to add 10 more minutes to the session, make it 30 minutes long, but also split it into two halves. The Silver class drivers going on track for the first 15 minutes, and the Gold class drivers following suit for the other 15 minutes.
As mentioned before, qualifying for our Silver class started on a greasy track, so slower lap times were definitely not unexpected. Pole position in Silver class this time around went to Drillon Ahmetaj (2:20.010), and with the conditions being tricky, we have seen quite big gaps between the drivers. Fleischman Krisztian managed to qualify in second, with a lap time of 2:20.747 (+0.737s), while Yannis Bouguerra ended up in third place, with 2:22.355 (+2.345s). Overall, Ahmetaj qualified in 15th position, while Krisztian and Bouguerra placed their cars on 17th and 18th position respectively.
With the track drying out just before our Gold class drivers took the stage for qualifying, naturally we expected much quicker lap times, and we were not disappointed. Abe Santema took pole position in class, and overall as well, with 2:16.312, over half a second clear of Hugo Boucher in second (2:16.835). Third place went to Damien Bosc, who posted a lap time of 2:17.067 (+0.755s). The gaps between the rest of the field was quite large, considering how close everyone was in previous rounds, but with such a long lap, and very difficult to get it right, it was kind of expected.
The opening couple of laps around Spa are usually very eventful, and full of carnage and chaos, especially with Eau Rouge and Raidillon being the first couple of corners that drivers have to negotiate, all while going side by side still. Heading down the Kemmel straight towards Les Combes can prove to be quite tricky as well, but we have to say that pretty much everyone made it through those first few moments of the race without any major issues! There were some smaller incidents further on in the lap, but when you have the whole field that close to one another, something is bound to happen. Even with that, we've seen lots of close side by side action, not just in the opening few laps, but throughout most of the race, with some drivers scoring their best results in the season, and also some of them having the worst race unfortunately.
In the end, Santema took the chequered flag first, in front of Boucher, and Michael White rounding out the Gold class and overall podium after 90 minutes of racing. In the Silver class, we have seen drivers progress quite far up the order in the overall standings, with the winner in class, Krisztian, finishing the race in 10th position overall. Second step on the podium in class has been occupied by Phil Clarke (12th overall), and taking third was Mike Landreth (15th overall).
If we take a quick look at the standings in both classes, we see Abe Santema at the top in Gold class, with a decent points gap to Damien Bosc, and due to a car change, Hugo Boucher dropped down to third. In the Silver class things are a lot closer, with Yannis Bouguerra leading the way, ahead of Paulo Tempera and Mike Landreth.
We still have two more races left in this season, still lots of points up for grabs, meaning the championship is still wide open! Next up, our drivers will travel to the land down under, to one of the most famous tracks, Bathurst, or Mount Panorama, which ever you prefer. It's another super difficult track to race on, with walls on the mountain posing a great threat so let's hope for some exciting action next time around, but until then, feel free to drop our YouTube channel a subscription, and check out the highlights of the race, as well as the whole replay of our race stream!