Hat-trick of poles for Barwell Aston at Spa

The Barwell Motorsport Belgian GT squad returned to Spa for the third (and final) time of the season last weekend, and came away with its Aston Martin DBRS9’s unofficial title of ‘Fastest GT3 car at Spa’ firmly intact! Vincent Vosse made it three poles out of three in the ‘pro’ qualifying session, and then he and car owner, Eddy Renard, put in their best race performance of the year in race one to claim fourth place – just 1.7s away from a podium finish.

RACE 1 – 1 HOUR (24 laps)

Eddy made a great start and immediately made up a place to claim sixth at La Source hairpin. He then comfortably kept in touch with the fourth and fifth place cars of Coens (Ferrari) and Kuismanen (Ford GT) for the opening seven laps. Coens then made a mistake on lap eight and dropped behind the Barwell Aston, promoting Eddy up to fifth.

Eddy has been getting quicker and quicker at each event this year, and he was now putting in his best drive of the season. For lap after lap he applied the pressure to Kuismanen’s Ford GT, as these two battled hard over fourth place. The gap between the two cars was under a second when Eddy came in to hand over to Vincent on lap 11, and all of Eddy’s hard work paid off as the Ford drivers had a really slow changeover and we passed them in the pit lane.

Vincent thus blasted out of the pit lane in fourth place and set about trying to reduce the 16 second gap to the third placed Dodge Viper. He was consistently over a second a lap faster than the Viper, but unfortunately just ran out of time to get the DBRS9 in a position to go for a passing move.

RACE 2 – 1 HOUR (24 laps)

Unfortunately Vosse wasn’t able to convert his hard-earned pole position into an instant race lead, as the factory Audi of double ‘pro’ driver pairing, Hemroulle/Verbergt, sneaked ahead into the hairpin. There were some light spots of rain appearing around Spa during these opening laps, and the drivers had to watch out in case the track surface started to become a little slippery. This maybe caught the Audi driver out as he exited the hairpin at the start of lap four, as the R8 spun around and slammed into the inside wall on the exit of the corner, signaling the immediate end of its race.

It also meant that the Barwell Aston was back in the lead of the race, and Vosse was able to take the helm untroubled until lap seven. With track conditions still a little greasy, the one car that seemed to be able to take advantage of this situation was the mid-engined Ford GT of Huisman. The Dutchman took second from the Van Hooydonk Viper and then usurped Vosse for the lead of the race on lap eight, and was able to build up a significant gap over Vincent. Vosse was still ‘best of the rest’, however, and handed the car over to Eddy in second place on lap 15.

Although the slippery conditions caught Eddy out on his first lap, allowing the Viper and Coens Ferrari through, he soon found his feet and was harassing the Ferrari for third. Eddy was now on the attack on a very tricky track surface and got the better of Coens on the exit of Eau Rouge on lap 20, moving up to third place, but in his attempts to keep the Aston behind, Coens had hit our car and caused some damage to the gearbox, smashing a ‘dog ring’. With the rain coming down hard towards the end of this lap, Eddy came into the pits for wet tyres, but as soon as he left the pits he reported that the gearbox had lost third and fourth gears. This was a result of the contact with the Ferrari and sadly spelt the end of Eddy and Vincent’s challenge for the podium. Eddy was able to carry on to the finish, but with the car missing two vital gears he was powerless to do anything about slipping back to 10th place.

Again bad luck had struck the Belgian Aston’s campaign, but the two races had produced the best combined performances this season from Eddy and Vincent. The Aston Martin Brussels-backed car had been a strong podium contender in both races, and Eddy had performed very well against the other amateur drivers in the race. A podium finish must surely be just round the next corner for our true ‘pro-am’ driver partnership, but it is always hard to penetrate the top two in the Belgian series with both the Audi and the Porsche Cup S filled with two professional drivers.