Pescarolo Spa Race Report

Perfect race at Spa, Pescarolo Team Autovision keeps the lead of both Le Mans Series Championship and Michelin Green X Challenge

The Belgian round has been full of surprises: bumps and bruises, collisions, crashes and red flags:

At the minute we arrived at Spa Francorchamps, we knew that it would not be an easy task. The racetrack requires a very specific set-up. Since we weren’t there in 2010 we started from zero and sharing the track with 55 other cars didn’t make it easier. On top of this, numerous interruptions due to crashes and accidents have considerably shortened testing time. However, qualifications went well enough. Third “gasoline engine” and very close to Prost’s Lola-Rebellion, we finally found a competitive aerodynamic balance for tomorrow’s race. Overall, we placed our Pescarolo n°16 seventh on the grid, helped by a last minutes red flag that highlighted the flaw in Peugeot’s typical strategy to set up a fast lap at the very end of qualifications.

#16 Pescarolo Team Pescarolo - Judd: Emmanuel Collard, Christophe Tinseau, Julien Jousse

Photo by: Lucien Harmegnies

Just like in Le Castellet, Christophe Tinseau took the start and stayed right behind Prost and his Rebellion for the next 28 laps. He then took the lead of the virtual gasoline category when Prost had to stop in the pits to fix a minor problem. Julien Jousse kept the lead during his double relay but was under heavy pressure from Jean-Christophe Bouillon and his Rebellion N°13. The Pescarolo Team Autovision pit strategy was flawless and our crew did a fantastic job during tires change, all of this helped our third driver Emmanuel Collard to keep under control both Rebellion-Toyota and Zytec strong come-back. For his final relay, Tinseau even managed to resist to Pagenaud’s Peugeot, delayed by a broken suspension, and passed under the checkered flag in 6th position, behind 5 diesel cars but still in front of two Peugeot.

For us, this 6th place is like a victory in the Le Mans Series* !

Numerous guests from Autovision, Eolen, Nerim and members of Association Pescarolo 2011 present at the event cheered this wonderful result. It was a perfect race for Pescarolo Team Autovision and after the Spa round; we’re still leading the LMS championship – for both team and drivers – and the Michelin Green X Challenge.

Like every gasoline powered Team, we hope that ACO will heavily revise the gasoline/diesel equivalence. The “2 % performance gap” rule has been heavily smashed and any lack of readjustment, after five years of unfair treatment, would simply be unintelligible.

Next rendez-vous : the 24 Hours of Le Mans, June 11th

* The 1000 km of Spa is part of both ILMC and LMS, points scored for the LMS championship are those of the overall classification. Thus, Pescarolo Team Autovision only scores points due for the 6th place. The podium reunited the three leaders of the common classification Audi and Peugeot.