If those woods are the trees that surround the 7km Spa Francorchamps circuit in Belgium, you certainly will be in for a very big surprise as over seventy top-flight GT3 cars and crews now settle themselves down at the circuit for this weekend’s Crowdstrike 24 Hours of Spa.
Not only functioning as the third round of the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup or even the third round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge Series, but this race also contains a few wild card or guest entries amongst them that will certainly spice things up come the green flag on Saturday.
We of course feature six full season Aston Martin Racing powered entries into the GTWCE Endurance Cup Series from the likes of the locally based Comtoyou Racing team, the German based Walkenhorst Motorsport team as well as a solo effort from the British based Ecurie Ecosse with Blackthorn as automatic entries into this event but we will also see a further (fourth) entry from the Comtoyou Racing team full of national importance.
The bronze ranked drivers enjoyed their first track action of the week earlier today (after a collective private test for all) with the #11 Comtoyou squad of Marcelo Tomasoni/Aaron Muss/Kyle Marcelli and Felice Jelmini had a few of their drivers eligible for that session as did the #56 Ecurie Ecosse by Blackthorn AMR of Giacomo Petrobelli/Jonny Adam/Lorcan Hanafin and Romain Leroux. We are, however, saddened to see the likes of Tom Wood miss out on his previously indicated drive within the #56 car despite previous confirmation by the team and series.
Next up the order are the two silver classed entries from both the Belgian and German teams in the form of Oliver Soderstrom/Kobe Pauwels/Sebastian Baud and Arthur Dorison aboard the #21 Comtoyou Racing entry with Mateo Villagomez/Than Ischer/Gaspard Simon and Maxime Robin aboard the #35 Walkenhorst AMR Vantage GT3.
Each team then field a Pro class entry apiece with former race winners Nicki Thiim/Marco Sorensen and Mattia Drudi looking to make for being taken out of the last race event at Monza very late on and without fault after some very poor driving standards had been on display whilst the Walkenhorst will field Henrique Chaves/ Christian Krognes and Jamie Day aboard their #34 entry.
That leaves the all-Belgian effort from the Belgian bases team as Nicolas Baert Xavier Knauf, Sarah Bovey and Gregory Servais join forces for this one-off event within their #700 Pro-Am entry.
Tomorrows significant event will be the annual car, and drivers parade and autograph session within the two centre of Spa with all the cars making their own way to and from the circuit along the public roads. After that, things become much more serious with two Free Practice sessions on Thursday ahead of Qualifying and night practice later on before Superpole for the front runners later on Friday.
The race itself will be waved off at 16:30hrs local on Saturday. What isn’t there to like about any of that?
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media