After surviving the ups and downs of Saturday evening, the Scuderia Ecosse outfit has had a quiet night of it at Spa, with the #63 machine making steady progress back up through the GT2 field following the disappearance of the sister car just under six hours in.
Indeed, the squad's #62 entry was in trouble even before lights out, with an ‘off' for new boy Jonny Kane at the Bus Stop Chicane during the morning warm-up necessitating hasty repairs and seeing the car only just make the start from the pit-lane. At the end of the first hour Andrew Kirkaldy and Tim Mullen were running respectively seventh and 13th in class. An hour later and the latter had worked his way up to ninth, despite a cracked exhaust making the
Ferrari 430 GT rather noisy.
Three hours in Chris Niarchos in the #63 machine went off at Les Coombes while running in fifth place, damaging the rear of the vehicle and bringing out the safety car. A ten-minute stop was required to repair the exhaust and rear bumper, while the car subsequently received an extra one-minute stop-go penalty as the accident had occurred under yellow flags.
“It was a mistake on my part,” the Canadian candidly admitted. “I braked too late going down the hill to Les Coombes. There was a car in the gravel there for a few laps and on this particular lap it was being towed out; that unsighted me and I missed my braking point.”
If it was bad news for one of Scuderia Ecosse's cars, however, it was good news for the other as Jarek Janis managed to gain a lap in the delayed #62 machine by pitting under the safety car. Four laps down and in eleventh place, meanwhile, Kirkaldy set about regaining precious lost ground and was soon the fastest GT2 driver on the track.
The #62 trio's efforts, though, were soon to come terminally unstuck as Tomas Enge lost it at the top of Eau Rouge having climbed back as far as fourth in class. The accident also saw the seventh-placed sister machine in the hands of Tim Sugden run over the debris, thankfully without any serious damage.
