Words: Editor Sarah Bennett-Baggs – Photos by Dave Brassington
Some classic preparers will have had just enough time to unload cars from the Goodwood Revival and give them a quick hose down before reloading the trucks and heading to Dover and on to Spa Francorchamps. This year’s tight timetable leaves little time for error let alone any rebuilds!
This year’s Spa Six Hours event celebrates the 25th edition of the international event hosted by the Roadbook team: Alain Defalle and Vincent Collard. This Saturday at 15.55pm 121 cars will line up for the start of this year’s Spa Six Hour event.
Amongst the heavyweight runners are no less than 17 Ford GT40’s (almost enough for a standalone race) 15 Ford Mustangs, 14 Jaguar E-Types and 6 Shelby Cobra’s.
Last year’s race winner was the Ford GT40 (no6) of Jason Wright, Michael Gans and Andy Wolfe. Second place and finishing on the same lap was Martin Stretton and Tony Wood and in third place was the Ford GT40 of Craig Davies, John Young and Andy Newell. All three of these Ford GT40’s are back with the same crews. They will have strong competition from another two Ford GT40 crews the duo of Oli Bryant and James Nottingham should go well and also Chris Ward driving with Andrew Smith.
But then amongst the rest of the fast Fords there is a smattering of pro drivers including Andy Wallace, Frank Stippler, Shaun Lynn, Rob Huff, to name just a few – so who knows – it could be anyone’s race. As we have seen in previous year’s pro-drivers don’t necessarily bring podium results, they bring ego, pressure and breakages, usually all in that order.
Amongst the E-Type entries there are also some great driver line-ups Adam Lindemann and Gary Pearson sharing no 74 could be interesting. Martin Melling, Rob Hall and Jason Minshaw should be a strong team in no 53. So should the experienced hands of John Clark, Phil Keen and Miles Griffiths in no.8.
Down the grid to the smaller engine pocket rockets on this year’s line-up are 13 Lotus Elan, 8 MGB’s, 5 Triumph TR4 and just two Healey 100s.
Amongst the British teams we have a few family affairs the Morley family Stuart, James and Clive all driving the family MGB. There are also three Frankels Richard, Andrew and Louis driving the enormous Frankel family Falcon and three Smiths, Simon, Daniel and Andrew in a Lotus Elan S1. There are a couple of husband and wife pairings, Pia and Tony Bianchi both driving with Til Bechtolscheimer in the sky blue MGB and of course Mike Thorne and myself in our Austin Healey 3000.
Some luck, tidy consistent laps and reliability seem to be the key to success, preferably without the flash flooding of 2015 would be a bonus! Good luck to everyone taking part we are going to be in the old pits around no. 15. So come and tell us your stories and adventures as the race unfolds.
