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LMS round 2 - Spa 1000 kms. 8-10 May 2009

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  • #31
    You can mail the Squadron? I guess they will have no problem to answer.

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    • #32
      The team is back:

      The team and car are back in Zeewolde. The mechanics will prepare the Laviolette GT2R for a pre-Le Mans test.
      Via: Spyker Squadron (spykersquadron) on Twitter

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      • #33
        Last week-end my wife and I visited the Spa 1000 kms. part I

        We left early on friday morning and arrived at our hotel in Franchorchamps at 13:30. We checked in, left our luggage in the hotelroom,

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        and walked straight to the circuit. The hotel was only 500 meter from the circuit, according to their website that is, but the road to the circuit is not flat but up and down hill so it was pretty tough, at least for untrained people like us...
        We entered the circuit at La Source hairpin and took a left. We could see the downhill straight to the old pit complex and when we walked further we saw the world famous Eau Rouge corner and the climb up to Kemmel which is much steeper then it looks on television.

        We saw the paddock but realised that we now were on the outside of the circuit, but in order to get to the paddock we needed to get inside the circuit.
        We walked a bit further and then there was a tunnel which brought us to the paddock. We wanted to visit the Spyker hospitality unit but we took the wrong way and ended up at scrutineering, where the cars are examined if they are complying with the rules. We noticed we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because the paddock ended there.

        We were about to turn and then saw the Spyker Laviolette GT2R. We thought she was up for scrutineering but the mechanics pushed the car into the general area of the paddock straight by us.

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        We were able to take some photographs of the car.

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        And then we saw Tom Coronel, one of the drivers, as well. He was really relaxed and even took time to get a picture taken with him and me. As it turned out there was a photo shoot to promote the new McGregor merchandise which will be ready for Le Mans!

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        We decided the best way to find the Spyker hospitality unit of Spyker was to follow the Spyker crew as we hoped they would return to it. And they did!

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        In there we talked to Sander van Dijk who explained that Spa was kind of Spyker's home race and that they would have many guests during the week-end, including people from the factory. Although he must have been pretty busy he was very nice in taking some time to talk to us. He asked if we had been up there at the pitscomplex and said we should meet him there during first free practice.
        Winning on sunday, selling on monday!

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        • #34
          Last week-end my wife and I visited the Spa 1000 kms. part II

          We had some time left and decided to go back to the outside of the circuit and walk up to Eau Rouge. At that time a Classic Enduring Race was about to start. We were really amazed about the seize of the field: 50+ cars. Very good to see these cars in the wild in stead of gathering dust in some museum.

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          After that we went to the paddock again but now went up to where the racecars were. We saw the Spyker truck and noticed it was parked opposite to the pitbox so it was actually an extension of the actual pitbox.

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          We walked further and found the Spyker pitbox and met Sander there who invited us into the Spyker pitbox. The new pit complex is really nice but because the LMS field consists of 51 entries there were not enough pitboxes to accomodate every team. That problem was solved by some teams having to share a pitbox. This was also the case for Spyker who had to share a box with JMB Racing, who are fielding a Ferrari 430GT in the same class as Spyker.

          I checked the box out and saw that it was devided into two sections. The first was a room with lockers where the mechanics could change, a toilet and a table with some laptops. There also was a big coolbox with "Crew Only" on it with some drinks in it. The second one was the actual pitbox where the car was in. There was a big toolbox to my right.

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          There were two flatscreens on one you can see what laptimes are achieved by every team and on the other, rotated shots of all the different corners of the circuit were shown. A bit further there was a laptop, which could be connected to the car when she came in.

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          At one time I looked at the screen but it was way above my head. I saw a lot of graphs on the screen and I think I could see some temperatures. Luckily the guy who was checking all of this kept raising his thumb after every time the car came in so all seemed to be under control!
          Last edited by Laviolette GT2R; 13-05-2009, 11:29.
          Winning on sunday, selling on monday!

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          • #35
            Last week-end my wife and I visited the Spa 1000 kms. part III

            At the end of the box, actually in the pitlane itself there was a big refuelling unit.

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            So there was not too much room. The path through the box had to be kept open at all times because the mechanics sometimes had to take certain things, for instance tyres, from the back.

            And tyres were a big issue during first free practice because the weather was, well like Spa actually. It started dryish: No rain at that moment but with a wet track. Tom Coronel went out and came back in after one lap, I asked Sander if there was something wrong but this was just standard procedure, this being the first time the car run after the Barcelona race, so the first lap is to check everything. Although this sounded really logic some drivers of other teams actually managed to damage their cars in just the first couple of laps...

            Tom went out again and came in again after this lap, this time there was a small problem which was solved very quick. Shortly after Tom went out, it started to rain again so Tom came in again to change his slicks for intermediates.

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            At the timing screen Spyker was on the last of four pages because a lot of the other teams managed to get a quick lap in before it started to rain. After a couple of laps Tom came in again and explained that he had not pushed for a good time in the rain but just lifted as soon as he noticed that the car began to slide. Other drivers were not so sensible and some of them crashed as a result of this...

            Then it was Peter Dumbreck his turn, who replaced Jarek Janis. Jarek was at Spa at the team but If I understand correctly he recently has had an operation on his jaw and was still under medication for this and was adviced by his doctor not to race.

            On the timing screen you could also see if any of the drivers was faster in one of the three sectors of a lap. Peter was able to better the third sector and Tom had been faster in the two first sectors of the lap. Peter went faster and faster and eventually gained enough time in the last sector to make up for time lost in the first two sectors and thereby bettering fastest laptime for the Spyker. And in the proces moving up to the third screen. This was much better because most of the GT2 contenders were on this screena s well, making it easier to compare with them. A lot of these had a faster laptime set in the early stages of the session but we noticed, by looking at the last laptime which was also on the screen, that there were only a few teams that were faster at that moment! The rain eased of and suddenly every one with a headset on started to laugh. Apparantly Peter had said "I need slicks" which was rather funny because it was still very wet and he turned in very competitive laptimes but was still not satisfied and wanted to get faster!

            He did get slicks though and certainly went for it. He now bettered first, second sector and then...
            ...he was of the screen. he had bettered himself so much that he went from mid third screen to the bottom of the second screen! he went faster and faster but now many teams had changed to slicks and also went faster, bumping the Spyker of the second screen again. The Spyker swapped screens several times and the mechanics who were also looking at the times

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            were making a game out of this: One of them asking the other to switch to the second screen allready because he thought he knew Peter would be on there again on his next lap.

            It was a good session and we had a great time, many thanx Sander!!
            Last edited by Laviolette GT2R; 13-05-2009, 11:33.
            Winning on sunday, selling on monday!

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            • #36
              Last week-end my wife and I visited the Spa 1000 kms. part IV

              First thing scheduled for saturday was the second free practice session from 09:45 - 10:45. We decided to go to the circuit a little bit early in order to find some good spots from where we could watch the action. We thought La Source would be great because it's a hairpin, so the cars come by relatively slow. On top of that, we figured some out-braking moves could be expected. When we arrived, the Classic Endurance Racing class, which I really started to like by now, was on the track.

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              As it turned out, this was actually a great spot but we still had some time left and decided to move on to the "Bus Stop chicane" which is opposite the pitlane entry. From there we had a great wide view. When looking to the right we could just see the cars exiting from Blanchimont, in front of us we could see the Bus stop chicane and the pit entrance and to the left, the run down to the start / finish straight. So quite a big piece of the circuit can be watched from here. We were right on time for the practice session.

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              After only a few laps, there was a big cloud of smoke...
              ...and out of it came the Spyker, allready on the grass but the driver fortunately kept her out of the wall! When the Spyker came by, all looked o.k. but she went in the pits and did not come out anymore for this session. We started to realize that we were really spoiled yesterday because now we did not have any information on lap times and did not know what had happened to the Spyker.

              With qualifying scheduled for 13:25 we had plenty of time to walk around the paddock and find a different spot to watch the qualifying session. We saw the "trophy tent" where the Le Mans trophies were displayed and visited some shops with merchandise. After that we went to a grandstand opposite the old pit complex, from where we had a view on the rundown from La Source to Eau Rouge.

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              We were very glad to see our favourite car back on the track for qualifying!

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              Although this spot was also great, and the fact that we could sit on a grandstand was very nice as well but nevertheless we decided to go back to our previous spot, the bus stop chicane, to watch the second part of qualifying: the prototypes there. It was an action packed qualifying session with quite some cars spinning of the track in front of us. Luckily these spins were all pretty harmless except maybe for this one, who could not restart and had to sit out the qualifying session...

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              With all the action over for this day we decided to go to Spa and have some dinner overthere and after that we had a few beers in the hotelbar, which was quite nice. We saw two team members of Jetalliance, probably celebrating their GT1 poleposition in their Aston Martin! Later we spotted some one from Spyker who went in briefly probably to ask for some directions as he seemed a bit lost. He was just in there long enough to ask him what had happened in second free practice session and what gridposition Spyker had aquired in qualifying. So now that we were up-to-date, we decided to hit the bed early as tomorrow would be a very busy day!
              Last edited by Laviolette GT2R; 14-05-2009, 12:39.
              Winning on sunday, selling on monday!

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              • #37
                Last week-end my wife and I visited the Spa 1000 kms. part V

                Sunday promised to be a very busy day: checking out of the hotel, warm-up session at 08:30, autograph session from 10:50 - 11:20 followed by a pitwalk and then of course the race that started at 12:50 and would last for 1000 kms. with a 6 hours maximum. And after that we still had to drive some 375 kms. ourselves to get home. We thought it would be a bit too busy so we decided to skip the warm-up session, in order to give us more time to get ready. We found out later that the warm-up session had been cancelled because there was too much fog hanging over the track, so we were lucky to not have missed anything.

                We went to the paddock to the area where the teamtrucks were parked and while waiting for the autograph session, we saw a lot of Spykerguests. we talked to some of them and they were obviously having a great time! We collected the autographs of the Spykerdrivers, including one of Jarek Janis and wished the team a good race.

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                We continued the session and were trying to locate and talk to the other Dutch drivers. We met Peter Kox, which is a really nice guy, and found out that one of his co-drivers was Erik Janis, Jarek's brother! It must have been very convenient to Jarek that the #55 Lambo's pitbox was right next to the pitbox of Spyker. We briefly met Christian Albers and wished him good luck for the race as well. And then it was time for the pitwalk. I thought everybody was allowed to take part on the pitwalk but as it turned out you needed special passes. Since we did not have these we decided to go to the grandstand before start / finish to be on time to get a good seat and watch the race. We found a good spot just opposite the Spyker pitbox where we hoped to be able to read the pit board of the team, in order to get some information about Spyker's position during the race.

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                After a while, the pitwalk which we could see from our seats, I know it's not the same, ended and the gridgirls made their way to the grid to mark the positions of the cars. Most of the cars did a couple of laps in and out the pits before positioning onto the grid.

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                Slowly all positions, except the cars that started from the pit-lane, filled and then the warm-up lap began.

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                One of the cars stalled on the grid and was pushed away but could rejoin before the actual start of the race. Tom Coronel who took the start was clearly having some difficulties in keeping a good pace. He lost some places in the first hour and was unlucky when the safety car came out for the second time, loosing almost a lap to the leading trio of GT2 cars. Before he handed over to Peter Dumbreck he was actually one lap down to the frontrunners in GT2. We thought with the second drivers in the cars that there would be chances for Spyker to move up because Spyker has two top drivers where a lot of other teams have only one good driver paired with one or even two paydrivers. Peter did a very good job as far as we could tell, lapping considerable faster then a lot of competitors in front and gaining and even passing some other cars. During the race we could indeed see the pit board and saw P7 and then P6 and later on in the race even P5. Now both Tom and Peter were much more able to keep a good pace but could not retrieve the lap they were behind, eventually finishing one lap down on the GT2 leaders in a very good 5th position. Spyker moved up to 4th after #77 Porsche was excluded after the race. A great result! Very promising for le Mans that reliability seems to be o.k. and speed has increased.
                Last edited by Laviolette GT2R; 14-05-2009, 15:27.
                Winning on sunday, selling on monday!

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                • #38
                  Nice report, thanks!

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                  • #39
                    Hi, if been there to last Sunday. I will post some pictures here.
                    And I've been also in the paddock to make some photo's.

                    It was a great race, but sad that the Spyker finished 4th. Outside of the podium.

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                    • #40
                      How can you upload some pictures from your computer to your thread?
                      I can't remember it, it's to long ago for me that I upload my last picture.

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                      • #41
                        Looks like you had a great time at the Spa-Francorchamps! Thanks for the pictures and info.

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                        • #42
                          Click on: "Go advanced" and after that you use the paperclip. Hope that helps.

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                          • #43
                            Originally posted by JVProduction View Post
                            How can you upload some pictures from your computer to your thread?
                            I can't remember it, it's to long ago for me that I upload my last picture.
                            Below the area where you type your message when you make a post, there is a frame called "Additional Options". In that frame you need to click on the button called "Manage attachments".

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                            • #44
                              I've been there on saturday and sunday. It was a great weekend
                              Fantastic to see the Spyker on a racetrack, it looked amazing.

                              The saturday started pretty shocking because already in one of the first practice laps the Spyker spun and hit the wall! Just in front of my eyes ! On the second picture it drives back on to the track after it spun. You can see some damage near the front wheel.

                              Thankfully it came out again in the qualifying session.

                              I loved to see the classic endurance race in the afternoon, some amazing cars participated. BMW M1, Porsche 935 Moby Dick 908, 910, 936 , Ferrari 512 BB LM, Ford GT40, Courage, Lola, Chevron March, etc.

                              On sundaymorning I visited the paddock. I wasn't allowed in there but could sneak my way in It was nice to see the racecars up close. I also saw Jos Verstappen driving around on a bicycle (all he could handle:lol.

                              The 1000 km race started soon so I left the paddock and walked around the track for a good place to take pictures. I walked all around the outside of the track, and made some amazing pictures...

                              #1
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