Photos by Dave Brassington
One hundred and seven cars lined up for this years Spa Six Hour race event, in stark contrast to previous years, the sun shone and the rain stayed away for the duration of the race.
After qualifying it was the Ford GT40 of Richard Meaden, Gerhard Berger, and Paolo Barilla who were on pole position – no surprise there you might think – a former F1 driver in the seat, but rumour has it – our tame racing journalist Dickie M was the pole setter. They lined up alongside the Ford GT40 of Grahame and Oliver Bryant with all the rest behind.
At 16.30 pm on Saturday afternoon under glorious blue skies and watched by an impressive crowd, over a hundred cars roared through Eau Rouge for the start lap. It wasn’t long before there were casualties, just one hour in the safety car was out to recover two stranded GT40’s one of which was the Meaden/Berger/Barilla car. Oops!
The lack of rain, did result in less casualties and more traffic to deal with for everyone. This year’s race winner was the Ford GT40 (no6) of Jason Wright, Michael Gans and Andy Wolfe. Second place – chasing hard and on the same lap – was Martin Stretton and Tony Wood. Third place went to the Ford GT40 of Craig Davies, John Young and Andy Newell.
Worth a mention was the TVR Griffith of Mike Whitaker, Nigel Reuben and Eugene O’Brien who won the GTS12 class finishing 4th overall on 95 laps and the North London Porsche team Jazz Motorsport did well to bring the first Porsche 911 home, 4th in class and 29th overall.
Also the super fast MGB (no 215) of Tom Smith and Andrew Lawley, who finished 19th overall and first in the GTS11 class. They qualified on a 3.09s lap and were placed much higher in the early hours of the race, circulating regularly at 3.09s – in an MGB !
We were out in our Healey 3000 for the first time, in the GTS12 class in amongst the Shelby Mustangs. We qualified 43rd with Mike posting the 3.04 lap time to be third fastest Healey. Our race plan all went to schedule with three driver changes, apart from two unscheduled stops, one for oil and some unlucky delays in the fuel station. We finished in 36th overall, 4th Healey home just behind Jaap Sinke, Nils-Fredrik Nyblaeus and Bart-Jan Deenik.
The whole Spa Six Hour event and the circuit appear to have had the edges polished up this year, with motorhomes now banned from the Paddock, there is more room to move about and the usual bunfight to park up has gone. We all miss the small greasy wooden shed which used to be Whoopi snacks now long gone and been replaced with a modern catering outlet – thankfully the chips still taste the same. Sadly also updated is the legendary 80’s power ballads – now also updated with more modern tunes. But some things don’t change, you still need to wave your arms around in the showers & toilets to avoid being plunged into darkness if you stand still longer than a nano-second and you still need to be a mountain goat to get around the Paddocks! And we still love it, see you next year!
Ed. Sarah BB
