Ted's Spa Notebook

Apologies for the late notebook this week, as the clean up operation here in the Spa pitlane continues ahead of the race in Monza just next Tuesday.

It appears that same old theme of tyres popped up again here at Spa, a circuit only rivalled by Silverstone and Suzuka in terms of load being put through the tyres. LIAMATTHURSO, Capt Crankshaft and Ferrari Mania all suffered from punctures late on in the race,which was strange in itself as any incidents likely to leave debris all occurred much earlier in the race. Conversely Liiam and Gav25182 both reported strong runs on the tyres, Liiam doing 38 laps on 2 sets of the soft tyres, which appeared to not lose to much performance over a stint.

So going down the Pit Lane, a fairly uneventful race for the Force India duo. jamesboro1993 rose from 5th to 3rd on the first lap, hounding LIAMATTHURSO for a few laps before settling for the last podium spot. He led home team-mate Capt Crankshaft, who fell down as low as 6th after a scruffy first lap, taking 4th when Gav25182 and Liiam took themselves out of the equation at the chicane. In fact the only battle the drivers had on track was with each other, as james’ 2 stop strategy out-foxed crankshafts 1. Crankshaft suffered a mysterious puncture late on on the harder tyre, which fortunately did not cost him position.

UD-War and LIAMATTHURSO appeared to be in a league of their own in front. Of course due to the rain in Saturdays qualifying, everyone had a free call on what tyres to start with. UD went with Options, while LIAM went with Primes, which enabled UD to pull a gap in the first stint which was told in the last stint. LIAM then had to pit late on for a puncture, but had the gap to resume in 2nd.

The real race here was to be found in the midfield. Liiam and Gav25182 spent half the first lap side by side before they both outbraked themselves in to the final chicane, dropping to 9th and 10th respectively. Liiam had risen one place before getting too eager on the throttle at the top of the circuit and putting it in to the wall. Fortunately, he had gone for primes at the start, so was not burdened with them for the rest of the race. He made a strong recovery, charging through to finish 6th. Gav was running 7th as the first stops approached, and got involved with the seemingly endless battle between RDS and Ferrari Mania. Only after stopping for Options did he manage to haul the battling duo back in and overtake both in one go with a breath taking pass down the inside of a 3 car drag to Les Combes. Ferrari’s troubles alleviated any further pressure and he finished a comfortable 5th.

Ferrari and RDS had spent the opening half of the race battling for 5th, but RDS fell back after a crash around his second stop. He eventually came in 10th and last. Ferrari meanwhile took a gamble mid way through the race. Having pitted on Lap 16 for Primes, he banked on being able to resist Gavs late charge and preserve the primes. The gamble backfired when not only was he passed by Gav, but then suffered a front right puncture, dropping him behind Liiam.

PDids and Stubob finished 8th and 9th after quiet races.

I see a lot of concern in the Pirelli motorhome in what was a strange weekend for tyres. Whilst 2 of the 3 failures occurred on the Prime tyres, the Options were consistent in up to 18 or 19 laps. As I mentioned earlier in the notebook, Spa is one of the tougher circuits on tyres. If memory serves, we did have 1 or 2 punctures in Silverstone, so it will be interesting to see how the Pirellis cope with the fast sweepers of Suzuka.

Next week I’ll talk more about the Championship, but for now, that’s all from me.

Any comments, questions and feedback are welcome.