Lionspeed Porsche lead 24 Hours of Spa with 4 hours to go

Credit: SRO/JEP

Four hours remain in the 24 Hours of Spa and Lionspeed GP lead in their No.80 Porsche with Ricardo Feller at the wheel. Between himself and teammate Thomas Preining, the duo have opened up a 25 second lead over the No.48 Mercedes.

The No.998 ROWE BMW still leads Gold from 11th place overall, with the No.74 Kessel Ferrari also still heading Bronze. The No.5 Optimum McLaren has worked it's way back to the front of Silver after a penalty for spinning around the No.65 Ford, while the No.0 Corvette leads Pro-Am from 30th overall.

As it happened

We crossed the 18 hour mark there was a four car battle for the lead between Luca Stolz in the No.48 Mercedes, Tommaso Mosca in the No.51 Ferrari, Bastian Buus in the No.80 Lionspeed GP Porsche and Ayhanchan Guven in the No.22 Schumacher CLRT Porsche.

While they were looking for a way past each other, another Porsche emerged as a challenger. Alessio Picariello in the No.2 Boutsen VDS car was catching the leading quartet at the rate of about seven tenths a lap.

Guven made the first move into the final chicane, sending it on Buus for third. The two stayed side-by-side all the way through and out of La Source, with Guven getting the run up the hill and the position.

On the same lap, Mosca had a run on Stolz heading up to Les Combes, he pulled to the outside, but the two made contact. Stolz came out of the corner okay, but the Ferrari had to take a trip into the runoff, and came back on with a puncture. The No.51 limped back into the pits as the team assessed the damage. The stop and damage cost them the best part of a lap, but crucially they didn't quite lose the lead lap.

The now leading trio all came into the pits, with Buus bringing the third place car in a lap early to give over to Thomas Preining. On the next lap, Stolz and Guven pit, to give over to Lucas Auer and Matt Campbell respectively. But as they re-emerged, the undercut worked for Lionspeed, who got the jump on both of them, and went from third to the lead.

In the next stint, Preining had great pace and managed to give his team a lead of about 15 seconds when the next round of pit stops came around. When he came in to give way to Ricardo Feller, the other group again pit a lap later.

Auer gave over to Maro Engel, with Dorian Boccolacci in the No.2 Boutsen VDS Porsche jumping the No.22 Schumacher CLRT still in the hands of Campbell. They all re-emerged in the pits with Nicklas Nielsen in the No.51 Ferrari was back in the fight.

Nielsen was fourth, but soon he put an aggressive move on Boccolacci for third at Les Combes, pushing the Frenchman onto the gravel briefly, but getting the place.

With four hours to go, Feller out front was continuing to extend the lead, out to 25 seconds. Engel was second, ahead of Nielsen, Boccolacci and Campbell.