Qualifying

In the first qualifying I constantly drove together with Felix Haas. Where I could outrun him on the acceleration and sheer speed, he was a bit more precise on braking. Since my last visit at Spa, in 2003, my car has improved a lot and where then I had no problem taking Eau Rouge flat it was now quite hairy. I tried three times, the first time I cut across Raidillon, the second time was prefect and I closed a gap to Felix of 50 m with enough speed to pass him, and the third time I ended up on the exit of the pit. My best time was 8th in 2:51.36, just behind Chris Stones who managed a 2:51.30 and Felix.

In the second qualifying I was sure that I could better my time. None of the fast laps in the first session was trouble free. There were always slower cars to overtake etc. But good times only come with good preparation. As my right mirror was lose I was distracted in the first laps and before I could get back in my rhythm the practice was over. I actually thought my last lap could be the quickest but I found that the flag is not shown at the point where you are timed and as I braked right after the flag - we had to enter the pit just before Eau Rouge - my time not faster.

It turned that I had lost a place as Matthew Dean had improved himself considerably. So my place at the grid was a respectable 9th out of FF1600 cars.

Race day

Race started wet but the track was drying quickly before the start of the race. So I waited till the last minute to make up my mind on what set-up to race. As I rightly assumed that although dry the track did not dry quick enough but it would only be damp, I chose a mild wet set-up: tire pressure up and stabilisers loser.

On the warm-up I found the car was handling very strange: steering felt strange and it pulled to the left, so I drove into the pit, where you just can see me on the picture below next to the start.

In the pit I found that everything was still connected and nothing had fallen off so I thought I give it a go. When Reinier wanted to push start me we found out that a sticking brake was the problem. I got on the track one lap behind and fould that I could ease the problem by setting the brake balance to the front - not ideal on a wet track. I could not brake very hard so I had to nurse the car under braking. It toke me a couple of laps to get away from a group of backmarkers, but there was nothing else to be done than bringing the car back home in one piece.