The main race of the Fun Cup year was held last weekend at the fabulous Belgian Grand Prix circuit in the Ardennes Forest. Over 135 cars plus another 25 twin seaters were entered for the 2008 Spa 25 hours.
After a fraught 25 hours the Cuisine de France / Relentless / SPAR team of Ian, Richard and Marc Connell plus Peter Cate staged a tremendous fight back through the field after an early incident dropped the car to the very back of the huge field.
Qualifying
Qualifying went very well, although we were unable to get Richard
or Ian many laps in the dry in race trim as rain plagued day two. Near the end
of the last session we sent Peter out to try and get a draft down the straights
to get a good grid position…..which he did very well, getting us up to 13th
on the 160 car grid.
The 25 hour race
As ever with us, the first hour of the race proved costly. After a few wet laps
and running in about 20th Marc had a scrape with another car that
ripped the valve out of the tyre. This should have been simple and quick to
sort, but when the wheel was changed a wheel stud snapped and it proved
impossible to get the damaged end out of the hub. This meant a complete hub
change which lost us 7 laps & dropped us to 135th place after one
hour.
We started to make some good progress up until the night session, when Ian was black flagged into the pits twice when the rear lights failed. More laps were lost when Richard had to pit with a failing alternator and Marc had another puncture.
So after half the race we had only climbed back up to 86th place and it did not look too promising!
Thereafter as the daylight dawned the car and drivers really started to motor on at a “Relentless” pace. During the next 12 hours we gained 2 laps back on the race leaders. By 18 hours we were up to 56th and hoping to get into the top 50.
Peter said, "We had the car working better than ever before and found we were as fast as anyone from Le Combes to Stavelot but with the engine slightly down on power, we were struggling to break away along the long straights through Blanchimont and up Kemmel”.
Marc added “I had a fantastic final stint which included running about 15 laps with Mark Gillam in the other Abbey Motorsport run car. We really got it together and bump drafted each other along…..hairy stuff but great if you can find a driver to trust who you can do it with…..no one passed us during those laps!”
Three fantastic final stints by Pete, Marc and finally Richard saw us up to 31st place by the start of the last lap.
Richard flew in his last stint making up several paces and was clearly enjoying himself: “I could see the pit signals showing me making up places fast, but I ran out of laps and finally on the last lap…… fuel! No risk then!”
The car ran dry half way around the final lap. We had taken a calculated risk that we thought might get us to the end, but despite this, we were still classified 32nd, and 4th of the 22 UK starters, an achievement we were very happy with after the early race gremlins!
Ian summed up the race: “To fight back from virtually last to 32nd position was testimony to our very consistent and fast driver line up and the excellent pit work of the Abbey Motorsport crew and the tactical calls by Mike and Nick on the pit wall. We had a truly "Relentless" pace, setting a fastest lap of 3.08.08, over 3 seconds quicker than our fastest lap in 2007”.
Thanks to the team
The car was ably run by Abbey Motorsport as usual led by Chef D`Equipe Tony
Gillam, supported by our No 1 mechanic Will Humphrey and joining Will in the
garage was our volunteer spanner man and general pit ace Marvin Hall. Thanks
also to other Abbey helpers, John, Warner and Dan plus ace nutritionist Tina.
On the pit wall a special thanks to our strategy crew Nick Carley and Mike Head from Premier Foods who did the whole 25 hours without a break or any sleep!
Thanks to sponsors
Thanks to many of our sponsors who helped us and the Abbey Motorsport team with
this race.
In particular thanks to Coca Cola Europe who provided cans of the Relentless energy drink that kept us wake for 25 hours, to Volvic for bottled water, to Cuisine de France whose muffins and snack were great calorie boosters, to Branston for their fantastic baked beans with all the cooked meals and to Vodka Kick for some much needed relaxation beverage after (not during!) the race.
TV Highlights from the race will be broadcast in the “Race World “programme on Sky Sports Television.
