WEC race in Spa resumes after serious Cadillac and BMW accident

With just under two hours to go before the end of the race, Bamber was pushing Neel Jani’s Proton Porsche 963 LMDh for third place as the pair found themselves in the battle for fourth place in the LMGT3 class on the way to Les Combes.

With Jani slightly behind Gelael’s WRT-entered BMW M4 GT3 and Erwan Bastard’s D’Station Aston Martin Vantage, Bamber overtook the Swiss as he rounded the right-hand bend of the Kemmel straight.

But as he moved to the right to get to Jani, he clipped the front of Gelael’s car and rammed his own chip Ganassi Racing V-Series.R LMDh hard into the guard rails on the right side of the road.

Bamber’s car hovered in the air before landing on its wheels, while Gelael made heavy contact with the guard rails on the left side.

It is assumed that both drivers are OK.

With only a few minutes left on the clock until the original six-hour duration expired, it was announced that the race would be extended to the same length of 1:47 hours as the red flag.

The race is scheduled to resume at 7:10 p.m. local time

“It could have been a lot worse, I think I’m very lucky here,” Gelael said on the WEC live feed.

“I was just in the middle, the two guys were fighting at the front and they misjudged and sometimes the misjudgment can lead to bigger things. I think everyone else sees it.”

“We wanted to salvage something this weekend, we didn’t do that anyway, but hopefully it’s the big problem for Le Mans, which I hope doesn’t happen at Le Mans. I keep my fingers crossed and am fully focused.”

“But it is also an accident that should not be taken lightly. I understand that things like this happen and it’s part of racing, but I also think it’s very preventable.”

“The respect between categories and the respect between drivers; some people do it very well, others a little less. Today was the worst.”

Kurt Mollekens, WRT’s LMGT3 team manager, said: “It’s very unfortunate, one weekend is not the same. We were the heroes of the previous one, now we return with zero points for both cars, serious accidents and a lot of work in front of Le.” Man.

“We would have preferred to avoid it, like everyone else would, but it is what it is.”

At the time of the interruption, Ferrari was leading the race with two factory 499P Le Mans hypercars.

Alessandro Pier Guidi with starting number 51 led Antonio Fuoco in the car with starting number 50, which had been excluded from qualifying due to being underweight and demoted to the back of the grid.

Both had overtaken the privateer Proton Porsche, which had led in Jani’s hands at half the distance, despite a bizarre problem with its door hatch.

Shortly after taking the lead from Julien Andlauer under a virtual safety car, the Swiss spent several slow laps closing his hesitant door and was shown a black and orange flag before managing to close it.

The Bamber-Gelael accident was the second major incident of the race. The VSC was triggered when BMW driver Rene Rast hit the rear of Phil Hanson’s Jota-Porsche on the drive to Brussels and threw him into the path of Ahmad Al Harthy in the other WRT BMW GT3.

Both Hanson and Al Harthy retired while Rast’s car was assessed a drive-through penalty.

Repairs to the Armco barriers caused the race to remain under caution for almost an hour before resuming.

The LMGT3 class is currently led by Morris Schuring’s Manthey EMA Porsche, which should soon be handed over to Richard Lietz.

#38 Hertz Team Jota Porsche 963: Jenson Button, Philip Hanson, Oliver Rasmussen, accident

Photo by: Paul Foster