All is in readiness now for the start of the Crowdstrike 24 Hours where Calan is looking forward to his debut start in the biggest GT race in the World.
The first practice session of the event on Thursday didn't go to plan for the number 30 BMW M4 GT3 of Calan, Niklas Krutten and JB Simmineaur when Niklas unfortunately had a spin in tricky track conditions at the beginning of his run. Damage was minor, however would require too long to fix for the car to resume the session.
The second session (Pre-qualifying) went well for the boys, but was interupted by a number of red flags limiting the on track time available. As a result they were certainly on the back foot going into qualifying, but confident in the feeling with the car.
For this event (being 24 hours), cars other than the Pro Cars can have a 4th driver. tyhe majority of Pro-Am, Bronze and Silver cars have 4 drivers, along with two of the Gold do also. Therefore, there are 4 qualifying sessions which can form the average time, and those with 4 drivers start from Q1, with all the 3 driver cars starting qualifying from Q2.
The weather conditions for Q1 were completely dry, and then from Q2 onwards the rain came getting steadily heavier and heavier!
As a result, around half of the 74 car field would have a dry lap time which is significantly faster included in their average, where none of the 3 driver cars would have. This has thrown the qualifying order completely up in the air with many Bronze and Pro-Am cars (along with Silver) up in the top 25 of the grid.
With limited experience still in these cars in the wet, and none at all in the dark, Calan was thrown into a very challenging situation having to qualifying in torrential conditions and complete darkness in Q3! He executed his session very well putting in top 10 lap times, before having his quickest lap time impeded badly by traffic at the end.
In the end, car 30 has qualified P5, P45 overall, with Gold class P4 and P3 within 3 cars ahead. The two Gold cars with 4 drivers are right up the front in the top 5, but 24 hours is a very long time to be able to catch them up.
If they can get away cleanly and get through the night unscathed, the team is very optimistic they will put themselves in contention for the win.
The race commences 4:30 local Belgium time.
