Second-place for Balfe after dramatic encounter at Spa

Lincolnshire racer Shaun Balfe had been eighth quickest in his qualifying session with the Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo.

“The track was almost fully dry, except for the pits straight and La Source Hairpin, so we were all on slicks. I finished the session a bit frustrated, as there was time to come, which I proved next morning in the warm-up, going a whole second quicker,” he said.

Co-driver Adam Smalley then took the car over for the second session, and with 14th best time, they were ninth on aggregate. “It was Adam’s first ever qualifying session at the Spa and he got caught up in some traffic,” Balfe added.

Sunday’s race was scheduled over two hours, with Balfe lining up for the two-hour race on the fourth row of the grid.

But when the lights went out there was chaos. Balfe had made a sensational start and took the outside line at the opening La Source Hairpin, plunging down to Eau Rouge in third place.

But behind there had been two separate incidents, causing red flags to recover the damaged cars and repair the armco.

Six cars failed to make the restart which had been reduced to 1h16 mins, as the restart took place behind the safety car.

After five laps the green flag waved, with Kevin Tse’s Mercedes and Giacomo Petrobelli’s Aston Martin making an early escape as Balfe’s McLaren consolidated third, over Matt Topham’s Aston Martin.

Balfe continued to set a consistent pace, but failed to make inroads on the lead duo. He made his stop after 18 laps, handing over to Smalley with a 10 seconds gap over Topham.

“It had been sunny and warm all day, I managed to avoid the first lap incidents, but didn’t quite have the pace to challenge the top two and I lost out a bit in traffic too in the second half of my stint. I lost the radio too, so didn’t know about any track limits and I just pitted when Petrobelli did, but fortunately the team were ready,” he explained.

Within a lap of rejoining Smalley had the car back into third place and was just six seconds off Jonny Adam, who had taken over the Aston Martin from Petrobelli.

Max Goetz was leading in the 2 Seas Mercedes, having taken over from Tse, but after 30 laps Adam was out of the race with an engine problem and Smalley was a comfortable second, over Ricky Collard’s Lamborghini.

The gap to the leader was 11.8 seconds, but Smalley was on a charge and when the flag came out just six laps later, he was only 6.663 seconds away from another victory.

The duo are now back into second place in the Championship, just three points away from the lead, but are still unbeaten with five wins from five in the Silver Am Class.

The next round of the Championship is at Snetterton on July 12-14, where it’s back to a double header format, with two one-hour races.

“It was a great weekend, mission achieved, but Snetterton will be tough for us, with a 20 second success penalty in a sprint race,” Balfe concluded.