This was the 5th round of the series after the cancellation of the Phillip Island race. BAM #367 had won 2 of the 4 rounds held so far and with a strong line-up in #366 as well and good speed shown during practice, the team was confident of a good result.
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| Jason gets a bit too close to an HPD at La Source |
#368 was led by Joseph but scheduling conflicts meant that a lot of drivers would need to be used - Oliver, Matt N, Daniel, Ernie, Jason and Josh would all need to do a stint or 2. The objective for this car was to keep it as clean as possible, ran reliable and consistent laps and see where that got to car at the end. All the guys did a great job and, despite a few bumps and bruises along the way, brought the car home in 12th place - more than achieving the objectives. For many of the drivers, this was their 1st 24 hour race so the experience will be invaluable for future races.
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| Robin moves past John in #366 at the Bus Stop to take 3rd place |
#367 had a bit of a nightmare. Lewis was missing due to internet problems so a lot of rescheduling of stints needed to be done. Braith, as car leader, did a huge number of laps - 186 - and Stephan also did additional spells. The other drivers - Robin, Juha & Christian were limited in the spells they could do due to other commitments but they did as much as they could with Robin rejoining late in the race to relieve some of the pressure from Braith. The car ran really well for the 1st 4 hours and was in 2nd place at one stage but an incident dropped the car down the field and the pressure of trying to recover plus the tiredness caused by the rescheduling meant that the car had a few more incidents and lost more time. But, the drivers did well to recover back to 10th place.
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| Jake set the tone in #366 from the start - moving up to 2nd by lap 6 |
#366 ran pretty much a perfect race. It was always near the front - it's worst position throughout the race was 4th and only needed to use 1 reset during the whole race - and that was at a point where the car was 3 laps ahead of all it's competitors. It led briefly during the pit stop cycle after the 2nd hour but took the lead properly after 4 hours and never lost it again. A huge advantage this car had was that Tommy, Jake and John have raced together a lot and with Fokke slotting in easily, the team felt very comfortable with each other and this made a big difference. Sam struggled early in his stint but settled down to a good consistent pace and held the car in position during his stints.
So, 24 hours, 582 laps, 126 incidents and 1 reset (actually 2 but the final one was a "spit and polish" at the last stop) after Jake took the green flag in the car, Fokke took the chequered flag to record BAM's 3rd win of the series. Tommy and John had both won big league races before but it's a 1st big win for Jake, Fokke and Sam - and both Fokke and Sam now have perfect records in 24 hour races :-)
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| Jake moves up to 2nd |
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| John had a scary moment with an HPD but survived OK |
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| Tommy takes the end on lap 101. #366 never lost it again |
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| Christian in #367, leads a big group of cars into Rivage at one of the restarts |
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| Matt N leads one of the McLarens through Eau Rouge |
For the final hour, John took over. He started very nervously and came very close to crashing on his out lap and was at the head of a train of very fast cars and so found it really difficult to get into any kind of rhythm for the 1st 10-15 laps of his spell. But, once he was clear of the very busy traffic, he settled into a decent pace and although he lost a few places to faster cars, the race attrition continued and he brought the car home in 12th - an awesome result for the team.
