Blancpain Spa 24 Hours 2017

[Alianora La Canta]

Fisico, Marco and James tested in preparation for the Spa 24 Hours today. They had a new chassis, as Kapersky Motorsport suspects damage to the one with which they competed in the first three rounds. The new chassis appears to be serving the team well, because with it, our intrepid trio came 2nd in the afternoon session (PDF link).

The race is going to be on the last week of July. All practise sessions will now be on Thursday 27th or Friday 28th, with Saturday morning completely clear of activity. The race is on Saturday 29th July afternoon to Sunday 30th July evening.

Furthermore, the car is a different livery now - it's in typical Ferrari red with white writing and the tricolour stripes of AF Corse (it is AF Corse that's running the team; it just so happen that Kapersky is sponsoring it)

[Alianora La Canta]

Fisico has declared the test "nice and productive", which is good

For more detail, there is the WECFans site, which appears to have the Kapersky press release in French. Haven't been able to find an English version yet but can tell even from this brief glance that Fisico is happy with the current situation.

[Alianora La Canta]

There's been a revised Spa 24 Hours entry list. Fisico and his friends remain on it, but a few new faces are on there. The most important is that Toni Vilander will race at Spa after all - in the #961 Am-class Spirit of Race. So we can cheer for Fisico and Toni with no conflict of interest, even though they're in different cars.

Naturally, I will try to keep you up-to-date on both of their race weeks.

[Alianora La Canta]

Time for a game of "Spot The Fisico and Toni!" Otherwise known as the group photo for the Spa 24 Hours.

Answer below:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Fisico is on the second row, in white and green, 5th from the left, wearing sunglasses.
Toni is on the third row, in the patch of red. He's the one on the right of that group (in front of the gap between the "L" and the "I")

[Alianora La Canta]

Fisico will start 3rd after a very successful qualifying

Kapersky Motorsport also posted some photos from the pre-race parade.

[Alianora La Canta]

Umm... ...sorry, I made an error. I told you Fisico was 3rd in qualifying. I didn't realise there was a thing called Superpole today that set the first few rows of the grid, so all that happened at that point was that Fisico and his friends had made it into that Superpole session.

James Calado has just stuck our favourite driver's car on pole. This is absolutely marvellous   

I'm still trying to find out when the race starts tomorrow.

[Alianora La Canta]

Fisico is, as you can probably imagine, really happy about the pole. (If you go through to the Twitpic video, apologies for the pit garage's dubious choice of accompanying music).

Daily Sportscar has a nice item on the pole.

Also, here is a photo of Fisico, Marco and James, all smiling

[Alianora La Canta]

Fisico and Marco lifted up their pole-winning team-mate in celebration

[Alianora La Canta]

[http://sportscar365.com/sro/blancpain-gt/calado-puts-kaspersky-ferrari-on-24h-spa-pole/]Daily Sportscar with more pole information and an audio piece from James Calado[/url], as well as finally giving times for tomorrow's race.

Toni came 34th in qualifying, 8th in Pro-Am class. This is itself a respectable performance.

James Calado did a pre-qualifying interview, revealing that the reason Kapersky Motorsport swapped chassis at the Paul Ricard test was that it turned out it had cracks in the chassis. That were probably there from the first race of the season in Monza...

All pit stops must be under 95 or above 133 seconds, unless the track is officially declared wet and a car is on slicks (then it may pit to swap tyres only, and it doesn't matter how fast or slow that stop is).

As for the race tomorrow, we need to tune in at:

3:30 pm BST
4:30 pm local time
5:30 pm Finnish time

for 24 hours of fun and racing. (Note: I am unlikely to be available much after 10:30 am BST / hour 19 of the race due to family commitments, but will be here in spirit).

Forza Fisico, Marco, James and Kapersky Motorsport! (Toni and AF Corse too...)

[Alianora La Canta]

James Calado has stated that he is against the element of zero-tolerance rules on contact that penalises a Pro driver more if they collide with an Am driver than a fellow Pro driver. Hopefully it won't be a factor for our drivers in the race, as I'd prefer them not to crash into anyone (or anyone crash into them) in the first place.

[Alianora La Canta]

Fisico was his usual fan-friendly self in the autograph session this morning

1 hour and 50 minutes until the race starts on Eurosport and (I believe) Radio Le Mans. Forza Fisico, Marco, James e Kapersky Motorsport!

[Alianora La Canta]

Don't have Eurosport? Try watching at the official Spa 24 page.

[Alianora La Canta]

My internet picked a really bad time to crash, so I missed the first 10 minutes. I'm happy to report that Fisico's start was much better (and yes, he gets to drive first). He is in the lead

[Alianora La Canta]

Somewhere in the melee, the two Lazarus Lamourghinis have collided. Oops!

[Alianora La Canta]

Half an hour into the race, the gap between Fisico and the pursuing Bortolotti of the #63 Huracan is up to 5.3 seconds. Wow!