Over the past weekend, 10-11 May, the third round of the FIA WEC championship took place on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.
For Daniel and The Hearth of Racing team, the performances didn’t at all reflect the final result obtained by the team at the end of the 6 hour race.
Ian, who started from 5th position, completed the first two stints of around 2 hours, maintaining an excellent race pace and managing to defend the fifth position.
Upon changing drivers, Daniel immediately set a high pace which allowed him to climb positions in the standings until he took second place. After the first stint of the driver from the Marche region, during tires change, the team encountered a problem with the rear tire of the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo version #27, which caused the team to lose precious seconds.
Just under two hours before the end of the race, when Daniel was in second position, a serious accident on the straight before turn 5 forced the race officials to display the red flag resulting in the safety car entering the track.
During the safety car the pitlane was closed, so The Hearth of Racing team, which unlike other teams had not yet refueled and changed tyres, had to return to the pits for a quick refueling (the only one allowed under the safety car regime) and when restarting after the green flag he had to stop again to replace tires and refuel.
Upon returning to the track – due to this double pitstop – Alex found himself significantly behind in the standings. The excellent race pace still allowed him to climb up to eighth position but in the last 15 minutes a small misunderstanding with a prototype caused him to go wide at turn 17 which caused him to lose further positions and ended the race in eleventh position.
“A truly unfortunate race.” – Daniel said – “We had an excellent pace, the car was working very well, The Hearth of Racing team and Aston Martin did an excellent job to give us a very competitive car.
Let’s say luck wasn’t on our side this time. However, the championship is still open: the gap to Porsche in first position has increased but we are still third on equal points with BMW. We will look for redemption in the next round on the Le Mans circuit.”
