The Spork Racing Team, who ran two Seat Supercopa’s at Zolder during the Superprix-weekend, can review a satisfying weekend. The Supersport-division within the Supercar Challenge held its seventh and eighth round at Zolder and again Spork could return home with a load of cups, flowers and podiumcaps.
“During the eve of each raceweekend, it’s constantly a matter of preconsidering all the variables, to think sober and to hope that Lady Fortuna is on your side. During the free practice I built up a lot of trust in the car, made a few modifications afterwards and it felt like the qualifying session in the afternoon couldn’t go wrong. The team decided I would do the first part of the qualifying. Provided with new tires and new brakes I got off in the middle of the pack. During the first 2 laps I pushed my way through the pack and found that one deciding free lap. My tires and brakes were ped in and I went for the actual qualifying lap. Lady Fortuna was clearly on my side because I succeeded in breaking the Spork Racing lap-record in Zolder and got listed as fastest DSG-shifted Supercopa in qualifying.” A clearly satisfied Jimmy Adriaenssens.
Even though the weather forecast for Saturday made a few drivers shiver, Saturday’s races were held in sunny conditions. The duo Adriaenssens-Nye, starting from an eleventh position in general and second in Supercopa, was keen on attacking the leading pack. Jimmy Adriaenssens started the race and about immediately it almost went wrong. “During the start I could climb up a few positions and had some drivers in front of me under pressure. After about three-quarter of the first lap I saw a slightly too optimistic BMW braking late in front of me and going off in the Rea-corner at the hospital. When the BMW re-entered the track he went sideways and got launched perpendicular towards me, I tried to avoid him but did feel a small impact on my rear-left wheel. Fortunately I kept my car in the right direction and didn’t lose much time, in the following straight I could feel my suspension didn’t suffer much from the impact and took my chances by fulfilling the rest of my stint without pitting for a check-up. If I did pitted, I would have lost that much time I couldn’t compete for the podium anymore.” After about 25 minutes of racing, David Nye took over in second position amongst the Supercopa’s and assured this position. The other car of the Spork Racing Team also did a good job and finished third. It was a Sporkial ceremony with both of their cars on the podium! Adriaenssens-Nye as second, De Kimpe-Van Paemel as third.
David Nye “As I started the second race, we decided to fit slicks because we assumed the slight drizzle would stop. Eventually it didn’t quite stop drizzling and it took me very long to get some heat in the rear tires. As always it’s no problem to get heat in the front tires, but those rear tires did slow me down a bit. The track was clearly more dangerous as some drivers expected, right in front of me the BMW M3 GT4 of Van Rijswick-l’Ortye lost control and face planted its German car right into wall on the sacrament hill. This accident obviously followed by a safety car procedure it stayed hard to get heat in the rear tires. After the safety car procedure, the race went smoothly but two laps before the mandatory pitstop my car oversteered heavily and I missed the wall by inches. If I had tapped the brake a bit later I would have guaranteed touched the wall. Luckily I didn’t and I could continue my race.” Jimmy who kept contact with David over the intercom decided to fit rain tires on the back. All the teams tried different, the one stayed on slicks, the other went for rain tires, nobody knew what the best option was but Jimmy thought he could make a difference by this rather special setting. “It has been 2 years now since I’ve raced on this setup. It was a trick which became popular when Tom Coronel won a WTCC-race with it. In 2010, I’ve also won a race by doing this and I hoped for it to work again. A rain tire doesn’t need much heat to separate glue from its surface, so you can immediately push. The main problem is though, you can easily burn them whilst racing on a dry surface, if the heat gets too high, the tire won’t stick to ground anymore and you will have to drift your car through the corners. No sooner said than done, the car did lose some grip towards the end of the race because of the drying surface and I had to drift the car through the corners. Both a fun but pretty dangerous way of driving. It feels like you’re going over the limit all the time and if you lose control once, you’ll probably end up on a towing truck. Keeping that in mind, I did find a balance between fast laptimes and no mistakes which resulted in a sixth position overall and second in Supercopa. Unfortunately the race was too short to gain a few more places but perhaps and I do say perhaps an overall podium could have been a possibility! Nevertheless I was very happy to treat the Spork Racing Team with another podium after this ultimately quite dangerous stunt.” AJ
In the Supercar Challenge standings, the Antwerpian could enforce his second position in the Supercopa division and the sixth position overall also delivers some nice point for the Supersport standings. Spork Racing is already looking forward to the next meeting in Assen. None of Spork’s drivers ever drove in Assen so they’ll work hard to find to correct settings, balance and rhythm. Herman Adriaenssens, teamchief of Spork Racing, has been racing in Assen a decade ago. So before the racemeeting, Herman’s experience is what the drivers will rely on.
See enclosed PDF-file for the Dutch race review.
Persbericht – Superprix Zolder Review (Adriaenssens-Nye schitteren tweemaal tijdens de Superprix)
