The GT Academy drivers are ready for another assault on the Spa 24hr this weekend as eight drivers line up in the two GT3 class Nismo GT-Rs.
As part of the Blancpain Endurance Series season, the 24h race is vital due to the additional points available, reflecting the race’s length – particularly as the two fastest RJN drivers, Alex Buncombe and Lucas Ordonez, have been split into different cars.
Additional drivers have been drafted in to reflect the gruelling nature of a 24 hour race on one of the world’s most intense circuits, so the #32 car is now driven by Alex, Mark Shulzhitskiy, Steve “Dan Mitchell” Doherty and Alex’s elder brother Chris Buncombe, making his GT Academy debut.
The #35 car that Lucas now drives is also under the charge of Peter Pyzera, Wolfgang Reip and 2011 champion Jann Mardenborough – back in the seat of the GT-R he helped develop last year and making it the third different category of car he’s driven competitively in a month. Indeed Jann’s also been driving the British Formula 3 International support race at Spa this weekend!
The race gets underway at 14.30 GMT/UTC (convert to your local time zone here). The teams currently site in 15th (#32) and 22nd (#35) after qualifying, though with Alex Buncombe the quickest car in morning warm-up and raindrops starting to fall – favouring both the GT-Rs and wet-specialist Mardenborough in particular.
Resources
- Live broadcast at Blancpain Endurance Series
- Nismo.tv’s live onboard streams
- Full race commentary from radiolemans
- The Twitter account of Nissan, @Nissan_OnTrack
- The discussion thread in our motorsports forum
As mentioned above, Jann’s been busy at Spa in open-wheeled cars too. In a season’s best F3 qualifying, he rounded out a Carlin 1-2-3 for race 1 and race 3.
Race 1 was nearly a disaster, however. In the closing stages he seized on an error at Bus Stop by his teammate and got a run out of La Source. Heading through Eau Rouge together, the almost-inevitable contact occurred, putting Latifi into the barriers and Mardenborough sliding off on his roll hoop…
While Latifi’s car wasn’t repairable, Jann’s was and he picked himself up to finish 6th in race 2. Race 3 will be underway shortly this morning.
Update: Jann finished race 3 in 2nd after some excellent driving in extremely wet conditions.
Meanwhile, in Australia…
Following on from Nissan’s intent to enter Nismo Athletes in the Bathurst 12hr, Lucas Ordoñez and remaining Nissan Le Mans driver Michael Krumm are reportedly to test an Australian V8 Supercar – in the shape of Nissan’s Altima V8 – in August ahead of a potential October date with the Mount Panorama track in the Bathurst 1000.
Great race overall. Congrats to Mercedes Benz and mostly to Bernd Schneider and Nissan for their 3rd place in the Pro Am category. (7th overall)
Reminds me of Hamilton
Well done guys :D 3rd on Pro-Am & 7th overall.
They need to ditch the GTR, it’s not a competitive GT3 car and they’re actually punching above it’s weight, give them a 458, SLS or 911 and they’ll wipe the floor with everyone.
They don’t have choice since Nissan is the supplier of racing cars for the GT Academy.
oyy…
It’s the fastest in a straight line and the fastest outright in the wet. Jann set the 3rd fastest night qualifying laptime of anyone and, last time I checked (on hour 21), Lucas had set the 2nd fastest lap of anyone other than the leading Schneider car. Lucas and Alex had to be split into different GT-Rs because they were setting times in qualifying so far ahead of anything other than a small clutch of full Pro teams (putting the GT-R second overall in one qualifying) AND leading races outright on merit and in sequence.
It seems to be a perfectly fine car, given that their pro drivers have the measure of other pro drivers and their am drivers have the measure of other am drivers.
All that aside, the likelihood of Nismo Athletes being in a Ferrari, Mercedes or Porsche en masse is somewhat slim. Only Jann has raced cars that wasn’t sporting a Nissan engine, in TRS and F3.
Spa is a must for GT6
With an update to night transitions, it should be in GT6 at launch. Im hoping one of the many online options we get is a way to more accurately portray endurance events as an event like proper individual class scoring and timing. aim actually doing one of these now and must get back to do final segment. enjoy rest of the race cheers.
Nissan Nismo 5th place NOW!
OUCH ! car 32 crash ! out #26 :(
PST – does that stand for Play Station Time…?
yes. PST is a time zone somewhere between LA and Honolulu. Which is exclusive to Playstation and does not necessarily correspond to any actual time, on this planet and any other.
Pacific Standard Time :D
@H.Keslijinen – Glad you have a sense of humour! I was just being stoopid when I wrote my “question”! Wanted to see what sort of reaction I’d get…
@zZEpiczAsianZz – If you’re right on the very edge of that time zone, does that mean you’re on the “Pacific Rim”? (boom-tish)
Hope we could make this course in GT6 with all this cars ! (16 cars in the grid but all this brands together)
With a hard AI and the new pyshics that would be amazing !
Breathing moment seconds after the start!! Ferrari 360’s and keeps going up the red wave!!
I like how the update doesn’t mention te fact that Mardenborough crashed himself into the race winner AFTER the finish on that race…
I switched off at the finish. Guess I wasn’t the only one…
Radio Le Mans has their coverage of the race on live right now and it will continue until the end of the race. :)
a 10 Lap Spa seasonal would have been good using the #5 Playstation GT3 Audi R8.
+1….. PD won’t let us have it though. Too many people like 1, 2 or 5 lap races. I would want 20 laps at Spa with that car at spec hp.
7AM PST
Is the race today?
It is indeed.
I can’t wait !!! Good luck guys :)