WRT BACK TO ITS BEST IN LMP2
WRT may have claimed second and third positions first time out this year at Sebring, but it wasn’t quite the force around the Florida airfield that it had been at the back end of 2021. But at Spa last Saturday the Belgian team was back to its imperious best on home turf.
It wasn’t so much that the team notched up a 1-2 at the end of the six hours that was so impressive. Rather it was the performance of the winning ORECA-GIBSON 07 shared by Sean Gelael, Robin Frijns and Rene Rast. They led the class for 67 of the 103 laps on the way to a 34-second victory ahead of the sister car driven by Rui Andrade, Norman Nato and Ferdinand Habsburg. More to the point,
Frijns led the race for 26 laps from the end of the second hour into the fourth.
Gelael put in probably his best WEC performance yet; he appeared to benefit from tests at Spa and Monza since Sebring after WRT airfreighted the #31 ORECA back from Sebring rather than waiting for the boat. The Indonesian ran second to the first stops (behind Antonio Felix da Costa in the #38 Jota ORECA), and again to the initial stoppage (behind Lorenzo Colombo in the Prema car).
The WRT machine moved into the lead when the safety car that followed shortly after the resumption brought the field into the pits in ever-heavier rain. The car was on wetweather Goodyears already, and the seconds gained by not changing tyres when the others did allowed Frijns to take over the lead. After a second red, he was able to pull away, extending his lead to as much as 15s.
The only hiccup for the winning crew came in the closing stages when the Ultimate ORECA spun right in front of Rast on the exit of the Bruxelles hairpin. The German T-boned the spinning car and damaged the nose of the WRT ORECA, but it was too late in the day to have any effect on the outcome.
As dominant as WRT was, it did enjoy some good fortune. It would have won anyway, but what happened on the front straight during the initial red helped Frijns get into the overall lead. Gelael had picked up a left-front puncture just before the stoppage. The rules allow teams to switch to wets, but not to change a single slick for another. It forced WRT’S hand into going to wets earlier than everyone else.
There was any number of cars that might have deprived the second WRT ORECA of the runner-up spot but for hard-luck stories. The United Autosports ORECA shared by Josh Pierson, Alex Lynn and Oliver Jarvis flew in the wet in Lynn’s hands, but its race unravelled with a broken door catch. When Jarvis took over at the second attempt, he had to do so via the passenger side.
Two moments for Phil Hanson at the
Bus Stop – one when he got bottled up behind the Toyota as it struggled on inters on an increasingly dry track – almost certainly cost the car he shared with Filipe Albuquerque and Will Owen the runner-up spot. The #38 Jota car recovered to third in the hands of Will Stevens after Roberto Gonzalez had struggled in the wet.