Spa Francorchamps - Round 10, 24-26 Sept 1999

Calum Lockie/Cor Euser - Marcos LM600 Mantara

After running a track day at Snetterton on Wednesday, my right hand man Andy Curtis and his wife Jo picked Melindi and me up on Thursday morning for the journey out to Spa.

The weather forecasts were giving a grim outlook and this was borne out by heavy cloud and damp roads on arrival at about 7.30 p.m. that evening.

Testing 24 Sept

The first session was due at the unnatural hour of 8.30 a.m. (7.30 a.m. UK time) so we arrived at the fantastic circuit an hour earlier to leave plenty of time for signing on and any other business.

However things were not quite as I had been expecting with the new 6.9 litre engine having only been delivered from the engine builder at 6.00 a.m. that morning. This meant that there was no way that the car was going to be ready for the first session.

This was a little less than satisfactory as you might imagine as I needed to re-acquaint myself with Spa and give myself the best opportunity to win the race. This I needed to do if I was to have any chance of netting 3rd in the final championship standings with 1st and 2nd already decided.

The crew worked like crazy but there just was not enough time to sort everything out so the second session at 2.45 p.m. went by without me driving a lap.

Qualifying 25 Sept

Saturday dawned with the weather looking gloomy. The first qualifying session was at 11.25 a.m. but the nightmare was continuing as the engine would not run well at all with loud popping and banging very similar to the Croft experience. On top of this the Belcar race organisers had refused to allow Cor to use both sessions of qualifying despite entering two races. Their reasoning was that he would get an advantage in terms of set-up time. Quite where this left me no one seemed to know and the Belgian organisers obviously did not care.

So we had to qualify with the engine misfiring like crazy and to prevent damage the rev limit was 3,500 rpm. This of course left us miles off the pace with a lap time over a minute off pole! I suppose the up side was that for the only time in my life I could take Eau Rouge, Pouhon and Blanchimont flat in sixth gear!

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Above : The Evo LM600 at Spa - Photo Courtesy David Lord

Race 26 Sept

For some unknown reason we had been allocated a race start time of 9.40 a.m. and with the weather doing its usual Spa thing the tyre choice was going to be critical. Looking at the track it seemed that wets were the way to go as although it was not raining the temperature was low and the track was not drying out appreciably.

Cor decided to go for wets as he would have to go off line to overtake. Starting at the back of the grid he was certainly going to have to do a lot of that! However by the time he got to the grid he had changed his mind and slicks it was. This was to be crucial later on but his decision did not surprise me as he has a wealth of experience, not just at Spa.

At 9.37 a.m. the pace car led them off round the parade lap, the lights went green and the 25 car field thundered off down to Eau Rouge. Cor was driving a stormer and came round in 5th place at the end of the first lap. Could things finally be working out - I did not dare think about it. Two cars had come together at Blanchimont so the pace car was scrambled and the field bunched up for three laps. I was not sure if this was beneficial or not but I think it did get Cor nearer to the class leaders.

By mid way through his stint Cor was in the class lead and pulling away gently while other teams were diving into the pits to change to slicks and make driver changes. Cor went serenely on his way and then pitted to hand over to me at about the 30-minute mark. Unsure if we were going to change to wets due to the rain falling pretty heavily the driver change was a bit of a shambles with no one holding the car it started to roll down the pit lane as Cor was jumping out. I jumped in anyway but by thetime I set off 35 seconds had gone by - double the usual pit stop time.

The long pit stop showed up very graphically. As I pulled out of the pits the Lotus was looming large and having the momentum of a flying lap it passed me on the run up Kemel Straight. I tucked in behind and held on to its rear bumper to see where I might try an overtaking manoeuvre. The opportunity came on the second lap coming out of the left-hand kink after Rivage, down the inside into Pouhon and I was back into the lead! I kept the foot in and with tricky wet/dry conditions drew away to a five second lead over the next couple of laps.

LM600 vs Esprit vs Porsche 911 GT1!
Above : The Evo LM600 retakes the GT2 lead as the Porsche 911GT1 overtakes both - Photo Courtesy David Stephens

Things looked to be going in the right direction until I got the biggest fright when the red Viper from Scandinavia suddenly appeared in my mirrors as if from nowhere. We went over the line onto the last lap only a second apart and the rain starting to come down. Being on slicks and thinking the Viper was on wets I feared I had lost the race. Pushing as hard as I dared I soon realised it was on slicks as well with huge slides out of the corners as it tried to catch me. However I was better on the brakes and so kept him at bay to win by 0.25 seconds after 52 minutes of racing.

Apart from being really pleased to reward the team after the huge amount of work and stress they had been under all weekend I have put myself right back in the running for third in the championship only 4 points adrift. Roll on Silverstone on 8/9/10th October when Cor and I will again be driving together.

Read how Calum got on at Silverstone in his own words.

Many thanks for this report to Melindi and Calum

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