As Belgium’s famous enduro hits a century, we pick out some of the key events since it all kicked off in 1924
GARY WATKINS
2021 Nothing ventured, nothing gained
The Iron Lynx Ferrari team looked home and dry in 2021 as the race entered the final hour. Its AF Corse-run 488 GT3 Evo driven by Alessandro Pier Guidi, Nicklas Nielsen and Come Ledogar had been on top for much of the race and had a clear margin over the second-placed WRT Audi R8 LMS GT3 shared by Dries Vanthoor, Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts. But with rain in the air, WRT boss Vincent Vosse made what appeared to be an outrageous gamble.
With 50 minutes left on the clock, Vanthoor came in for the car’s final pitstop and was sent out on wet-weather tyres – on a bone dry track. It wasn’t raining anywhere around the 4.35-mile length of the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. But it was in the immediate vicinity of the track.
WRT had an army of spotters on bikes circling the track in contact with the pits by radio. Vosse was getting reports that it was raining “200 metres from the circuit” and the Belgian team, whose high command of Vosse, Thierry Tassin and Pierre Dieudonne had seven Spa 24 Hours wins between them, “knew exactly where the weather was coming from and where it was going”. Hence why Vanthoor was sent out on grooved rubber that came into its own when the heavy rain came halfway around his out-lap.
The gamble, reckons Vosse, panicked the Ferrari team. That explains why it waited for a lap to bring in Pier Guidi, and a 20-second advantage turned into a deficit of just over a minute. The rain inevitably triggered a safety car. When the race went green with 27 minutes to go, sadly for WRT only a handful of cars sat between Vanthoor and Pier Guidi. The Italian hunted down the leader and took the lead with a breathtaking manoeuvre around the outside at Blanchimont with 10 minutes to go.
Vosse insists he wasn’t disappointed: “It was one of those races where you do everything right, but you aren’t fast enough. It was a fun call to make at the end. No regrets.”
1924 How it all began
The Spa 24 Hours might be regarded as a copycat race, its inauguration following one year on from the first running of Le Mans in 1923. Yet there had been
