Jani leads as a multi-vehicle incident triggers a safety car period at Spa – Motorsport Week

Neel Jani of the No. 99 Proton Competition Porsche was in the lead after two hours of racing in the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps of the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship.

The opening hour resulted in a hectic, exciting yet controlled start to the race with an attacking performance from Andlauer in the #99 Proton Competition Porsche 963, having taken the lead before opening up a significant lead.

The action continued in the second hour, with the Porsches – factory and customer cars – showing an encouraging pace, although the No. 6 Porsche Penske of Frederic Makowiecki was ahead of Antonio Giovinazzi’s change in the No. 51 Ferrari 499P on the Kemmel Straight persecuted was made by the Italian.

Toyota was looking for redemption after a difficult start when the #7 GR010 Hybrid driven by Mike Conway was chased by Will Stevens in the #12 JOTA 963, and so the two Brits carried on together.

As Andlauer increased the lead into second place, the car that started in second place – the No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R of Alex Lynn – got off to a difficult start and pulled over with fresh medium tires on the left side Box to regain the deficit They couldn’t keep up with the speed, which was mainly due to tire performance.

He overtook Marco Wittmann in the BMW M Hybrid with starting number 15 WRT and ended up in 11th place as he chased the points threshold.

The first safety car period was deployed after Marco Wittmann in the #20 BMW WRT – which was later penalized with a drive-through penalty – collided with the #38 JOTA Porsche of Phil Hanson, which touched the #46 BMW M4 WRT of Ahmad Al Harthy.

When the #46 hit the left guardrail before Les Combes (Turn 8), a virtual safety car phase – which shortly afterwards turned into an extended safety car phase – was ordered to clear the guardrail into which the #46 46 crashed into it, to be completely replaced.

A tense moment for the number 99 of Jani was when the door would not close after several repeated attempts, although the problem was resolved, meaning they ignored a black and orange flag.

Jani had the lead in the Hypercar class ahead of James Calado in the #51 Ferrari 499P, followed by the #5 Porsche Penske of Michael Christensen.

Fourth place went to the other No. 6 Porsche Penske of Andre Lotterer, while Yifei Ye in the No. 83 Ferrari 499P AF Corse rounded out the top five.

In LMGT3, Sarah Bovy in the #85 Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 maintained great pace and was up to 40 seconds ahead of the second-placed #59 United Autosports McLaren 720S GT3 EVO of James Cottingham.

The attention was on the battle for places just outside the podium as Al Harthy Ian James in the No. 27 Heart of Racing AMR Vantage and Francesco Castellacci in the No. 54 Ferrari 296 AF Corse and the No. 92 Manthey-Porsche 911 Malykhin fended off the compact train completed.

James and Castellacci made it to fourth and fifth place as the AMR held off the Ferrari and Al Harthy lost two positions.

Unfortunately for him, the day turned less than ideal for the #46 when they were involved in a multi-car collision.

In the LMGT3 lead was the #85 Lamborghini of Sarah Bovy, followed by the #59 McLaren of James Cottingham and Yasser Shahin’s #91 Manthey-Porsche in third place.

Arnold Robin in the #78 Lexus RC F from Akoddis ASP took fourth place, while Francesco Castellacci in the #54 AF Corse Ferrari followed in fifth place.