Lionspeed Porsche leads with 2 hours to go in Spa 24 Hours

Credit: SRO/JEP

Bastian Buus leads the way with two hours to go in the 24 Hours of Spa in the No.80 Lionspeed GP Porsche. There is a battle for second between Lucas Auer in the No.48 Mercedes and the No.22 Schumacher CLRT Porsche in the hands of Matt Campbell.

The No.998 ROWE BMW is dominating the Gold class, leading by four laps in 11th overall. Kessel Racing are also still heading up Bronze from 12th overall with the No.74 Ferrari, while the No.5 Optimum McLaren also holds on in Silver from 14th overall. You have to go back to 30th to find the Pro-Am leader, the No.0 JMR Corvette is still in front there.

Read about hours 18-20 here.

As it happened

We opened up the final four hours with an incident for the No.123 Muhlner Motorsports Porsche which had an off at Eau Rouge. The race director straight away brought out the FCY. Tobias Muller lost the rear after the first part of the high speed corner, and was just a passenger at that stage.

The barriers needed to be repaired, so everyone pit under the FCY. The order going to green was the No.80 Lionspeed of Thomas Preining ahead of Maro Engel in the No.48 Mercedes. Then was Tomasco Mosca in the No.51 Ferrari, Morris Schuring in the No.2 Boutsen VDS Porsche with Ayhanchan Guven in the No.22 Schumacher CLRT Porsche in fifth.

Crucially for the lead Porsche, there was a back marker between him and Engel, and a second car between Engel and Mosca.

The traffic helped Preining get away out front, and it briefly helped Engel too. But Mosca in the No.51 caught up quite quickly and was looking very feisty in the battle for second and third place.

Mosca was trying his hardest to get by, with a second battle going on behind them. Schuring was defending from Guven, who was getting impatient behind the No.2. Twice he tried a move into La Source, and the third time he sent a divebomb down the inside of Schuring.

He got down the inside and past Schuring, but he cut across too early and took the bumper off of the Boutsen VDS car. The front bumper was loose and the front right headlight was hanging off. The No.2 lost about 40 seconds while the team repaired the damage, pushing them away from the lead battle.

Over the next round of pit stops, Preining handed the lead car back to Bastian Buus, with a nice lead. The No.48 was second with Lucas Auer now in board, with the No.22 Porsche close behind in the hands Matt Campbell. The No.51 had Nicklas Nielsen back in, with a slow stop demoting them to the back of the now four car lead battle.

With Buus in the gap came down ever so slightly, but not enough to start worrying the Lionspeed crew. With two hours to go he led by 13 seconds over the battling Mercedes and Porsche behind, with Nielsen in the No.51 start to make it a three car fight. Fifth was the sister No.50 car about 20 seconds back, in the hands of Arthur Leclerc.