Spa Thursday Notebook

***The No. 81 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo missed qualifying and is set to start from the back of the 75-car grid after Gabriele Piana crashed at Raidillon during Pre-Qualifying. A Mercedes-AMG spokesperson confirmed that the team will work to get the car repaired for the start of the race on Saturday.

***Walkenhorst Motorsport was reported to the stewards on Wednesday after the team missed its allocated scrutineering slot for both the No. 34 and No. 35 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evos. However, no penalty was given after the team pointed out that the two chassis in use this weekend were also used in the Nürburgring 24, where the two cars retired after a fuel filter issue and crash, respectively. The team missed scrutineering as a result, which was deemed to be a case of force majeure.

***Rutronik Racing changed the chassis on the No. 97 Porsche 911 GT3 R after a crash at Blanchimont for Antares Au during Tuesday’s Bronze Test. As the change was carried out prior to the start of Free Practice, no penalty was applied. A similar decision was made by the stewards regarding the No. 29 AV Racing by Car Collection Motorsport Porsche, which underwent an engine change after encountering issues during Wednesday’s parade.

***Notably, two drivers were reported to the stewards for missing the drivers’ briefing in downtown Spa, also held on Wednesday. While Paul Motorsport driver Marzio Moretti received a fine of €500 ($580 USD) for his absence, Alexei Nesov was not penalized as he had “academic obligations” at his university at the time of the briefing. This was found to constitute a force majeure situation.

***Dan Harper spoke about the significance of him and Max Hesse sharing the No. 998 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO with Philipp Eng, as he revealed the Austrian was an early mentor in the Junior Team program that eventually led to full factory roles for both drivers as well as Neil Verhagen.

***Harper told Sportscar365: “We never drove with him, we drove with Augusto [Farfus] in the first year. But to be honest, I was working with Philipp before Augusto. So we know him well and he was obviously in the sister car the last couple of years in GT World Challenge Europe. So it’s really nice now to share a car with him.`”

***Raffaele Marciello revealed via an Instagram post in the wake of winning the Nürburgring 24 that he was briefly hospitalized in the days building up to the Eifel endurance classic. “On Tuesday when I was going to Nürburgring, on the way I started to vomit a lot,” Marciello told Sportscar365. “Every 20 minutes I was throwing up. So before entering Germany I stopped in Basel, in the hospital, did a blood check and everything. They didn’t really find anything so [maybe] some virus or food, I don’t know. On Wednesday I took it a bit easy and after that I was okay.”

***This year’s edition of the 24H Spa will be the first one run on Pirelli’s P Zero DHG slick compound, which was first made available to GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup teams at the Prologue pre-season test at Paul Ricard. Pirelli has stated that it has a core team of 140 technicians, engineers and other staff on site at Spa as part of the supply effort for both the 24H Spa as well as various support series.

***GRT Grasser Racing Team driver Jordan Pepper, who races on the P Zero DHG in Endurance Cup, Sprint Cup as well as DTM, believes Grasser’s widespread use of the tire can be used to the Austrian squad’s benefit.

***Pepper told Sportscar365: “We’re collecting so much more data than maybe some of our competitors. So we have a more frequent chance to try new philosophies and adapt and I feel like leading up to Spa that’s allowed us to be a lot better prepared than last year, when we only did the Endurance program for example.”

***Former Audi LMP1 factory driver Marco Bononomi designed the ‘street art’ livery on the No. 8 Kessel Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 that’s driven this weekend by Nicolo Rosi, Niccolo Schiro, David Fumanelli and Daniele Di Amato, which features nicknames from each of the drivers.

***Wright Motorsports team owner/driver Adam Adelson revealed they opted for a three-driver lineup instead of the more popular four-driver option in the Gold class as a “test” for potential future international races that mandate only three.

***The Ohio-based team is known to be actively evaluating additional overseas races beyond this weekend’s race. “There had always been consideration for a fourth,” Adelson told Sportscar365. “But we thought to ourselves, ‘Let’s play out a few scenarios here.’ Let’s say we compete in more IGTC rounds, or more SRO Europe races next year or in the years to come… We felt like doing our first 24-hour as a three-driver lineup as a test for potential future events where that might [be] mandated.”

***Maserati’s ‘MCXtrema’, a track-day only car, will serve as the leading car for the 24H Spa, with a special livery celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Maserati MC12’s first victory in the Belgian endurance classic. The livery is reminiscent of the Vitaphone Team’s colors from the 2005 event, which was won by Michael Bartels, Timo Scheider and Eric van de Poele.

***As has been the case for a number of years, there is a large contingent of SRO America staff on-site this weekend, including President and CEO Greg Gill, general manager Staci Langham, VP of marketing communications and business development Robbie Montinola, partnership manager Natasha Masterson, senior marketing and communications manager Taylor Beddell, press officer Eliane Gilain, as well as founding board member Peter Cunningham.

***SRO Motorsports Group has announced the second batch of inductees for the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa Hall of Fame, which was opened last year. Marc Duez and Thierry Tassin, both multi-time winners of the event, are joined by Audi Sport and Pirelli.

***As part of fan activation in the Spa paddock, organizers have put together a display featuring a number of cars associated with famous films and TV shows. Among the cars on display are James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, the Ford Gran Torino from Starsky and Hutch, a Dodge Charger from The Dukes of Hazzard, Magnum, P.I.’s Ferrari 308 GTS and the DMC DeLorean from the Back to the Future trilogy.

***On-track running on Friday will be headlined by Superpole, which takes place at 4:10 p.m. CEST (10:10 a.m. EST). That will be then be followed by a 30-minute warmup session scheduled for 8:05 p.m. local time (2:05 p.m. EST).

John Dagys contributed to this report