REGISTER HERE WELCOME TO ROUND 2 SPA FRANCORSHAMPS - ENDURANCE LAYOUT - Just as in the real Spa Francorshamps event, this race will be in daylight and 100% dry. Extended Highlights I 2024 TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa I FIA WEC RACE REVIEW TOYOTA GAZOO Racing overcame a challenging and eventful 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps to earn a solid result in the third round of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) in Belgium. In the last race before the Le Mans 24 Hours, the team battled against contact with other cars, penalties, and a performance deficit to secure points in their World Championship defence thanks to a strong effort from drivers, engineers and mechanics. World Champions Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa, in the #8 GR010 HYBRID, finished sixth. Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries followed up their win at Imola with seventh place in their #7 GR010 HYBRID. Although the result brought an end its seven-race winning streak at Spa, the team remains firmly in World Championship contention, second in the standings, just 23 points behind leaders Porsche going into the double-points Le Mans 24 Hours. A record 88,100 weekend crowd gathered at Spa on a warm, sunny day for the start as 19 Hypercars battled for position around the first lap, which set the tone for an incident-packed race. Sébastien lined up a promising sixth but was hit by another car at the first corner and dropped to ninth. He fell further back due to a five-second stop-go penalty for exceeding the permitted energy usage on the formation lap. Mike made progress from 14th to 12th and tried to break into the top 10. Both cars took fuel only at the first pit stops, helping Mike move up to eighth, and he fought to defend that position under pressure from rivals on fresh tyres, before slipping to 10th. Just after 90 minutes, both cars seized the opportunity of a safety car to pit for new tyres, losing less time than under green flag conditions. After a long safety car period, Nyck resumed in ninth, and Ryo took over in 11th. The gap to the leading pack was reduced but that time gain was lost for the #7 when it dropped to 15th following a drive-through penalty for a virtual safety car infringement. Nyck and Ryo drove hard to make up positions going into the second half of the race and joined of a four-car fight for seventh late in the fourth hour. As the battle wore on, Nyck overtook Ryo for fifth, just seconds before an accident elsewhere on track caused a two-hour red flag to repair safety barriers. Racing resumed with one hour 44 minutes remaining and Kamui briefly ran third after the next round of fuel stops, before losing out to the #50 Ferrari. Going into the last hour, Kamui put pressure on the podium positions from fourth, while Brendon had the top six in his sights. During the last half hour, Kamui was unable to hang on to fourth as the #51 Ferrari and #99 Porsche made the most of a performance advantage to get past. Kamui was then handed a five-second penalty for contact with a lapped LMGT3 car. That meant, when he crossed the line less than two seconds ahead of Brendon, the #8 GR010 HYBRID was classified sixth, and the #7 seventh. The team’s focus now switches immediately to the highlight of the WEC season, the Le Mans 24 Hours. The 2024-specification GR010 HYBRIDs will hit the Circuit de la Sarthe for the first time on Sunday 9 June at the official test day, before the race itself on 15-16 June.
The final chicane is going to be an absolute killer here. Kerbs are lethal and it's much tighter than I remember. [Edit: Ignore this. Posted in the wrong thread.]
