The third day of the World Endurance Championship (WEC) was not without a terrible accident.
Renger van der Zande took off in the Eau Rouge with the Cadillac #3 (Bourdais/van der Zande/Aitken; DNF), causing the third serious accident in as many days in the Eau Rouge/Raidillon area.
He survived the accident unharmed. The Dutchman reported to the Ganassi team that he could no longer steer. The television pictures showed that the car touched down in the Eau Rouge.
“After the fire on Thursday, it’s really not an easy weekend. The guys worked so hard. That puts additional strain on a system that’s already at its limit,” says teammate Sébastien Bourdais, looking at the preparations for the three V-Series .R for the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the upcoming IMSA races.
Toyota does everything right
There wasn’t much that was new at the front: Toyota clinched a commanding double victory in the 6 Hours of Spa. But the competition was closer than ever. In the end, Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe used all of its experience, made the right decisions at the right moment and clinched the second one-two of the season.
Right at the start of the race, the field of hypercars was divided; half started on slicks, the other half on rain tires. Even before the start of the race, numerous slick cars spun in the drizzle because they couldn’t keep up with the pace of the warm-up lap.
After an additional warm-up lap and an early safety car phase, the track dried out quickly and all vehicles on rain tires had to change tires. This affected both Ferraris and both Peugeots as well as a Cadillac and the Jota Porsche.
Due to three more safety car phases in the race, the #8 Toyota (Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa; 2nd), which had to start the race from last place on the grid after Brendon Hartley’s qualifying accident, came within striking distance of the #7 sister car.
Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez eventually won the race, although Kobayashi’s final off-track overtake drew an investigation.
Hartley came out of the pits with cold tires, Kobayashi used the run-off zone to take the lead. There was a 5-second penalty for this. This did not change the result, because the team president extended his lead to 16.637 seconds.
