The Total Spa 24 Hours is the sixth round of the 2007 FIA GT championship and the blue ribbon event of the season and what better place to have it then Spa Francorchamps! Tech 9 started their preparations for their first 24 hour race weeks ago, as it was going to be a tough race for the team, drivers and car alike.

Practice one saw Sascha Maassen (Porsche factory driver) spend most of the time in the car setting it up for the race, red flags, among other things made this very difficult. Never the less he was happy with where the car was and said it only needed a bit of tweaking to make it near enough perfect. The last thirty minutes of practice one was left to Leo Machitski and Sean Edwards, Leo starting and handing over to Sean after twenty minutes of driving. Unfortunately for Sean, a red flag left him only to complete an out and in lap before the chequered flag. “I have not driven the new configuration of Spa and not had a chance to drive this car round here either, so it’s a bit hard having so little time in the car, but hopefully next session I can get a bit more in.” Sean said.

In practice two, Sean and Sascha spent forty minutes tweaking the setup of the car between them and agreeing on a setup for the race and qualifying, with Leo spending most of the time getting used to the track in the Porsche. Sean commented “I got 6 flying laps this session, which was good, but traffic is a big problem out there, Sascha managed to get one free lap in, but I didn’t. I was 0.7 of a second up on him through Eau Rouge before I hit traffic though, so it’s is looking promising for qualifying. Although I am still not totally comfortable with the car and track yet, hopefully I can get some decent running in the three qualifying sessions.

Qualifying one was split between Sean and Leo with Sean just trying the limits of the car and track before his soft tyre run in qualifying three. “I set a pretty good time and am happy with the track and car now and I am looking forward to qualifying tomorrow morning!” said Sean. Most GT2 cars used there three sets of new tyres in the first qualifying, which put the Tech 9 machine slightly down the order in GT2, but it looked good for there qualifying run.

Unfortunately just before qualifying two (at night), they found that the cars water pressure was increasing quite drastically and could damage the engine. So the three drivers had to complete there one mandatory lap at night and then park the car unfortunately, while the Porsche engineers went to work to find the problem. IMSA had already taken the spare engine from Porsche, after blowing theirs on the way to the parade on Wednesday. So they set about taking the engine apart and finally found that it was the head gasket that had gone and needed replacing for the race. “Luckily we found a problem after stripping the engine and we are fixing it now, so we should have no more problems with that” said team boss Phil Hindley.

The penalty for this though was the Tech 9 car would have to start from the back of the grid for the 24 hour race, behind all the G3 cars. Although qualifying is not important, as the race is so long, it will still make it hard in the early stages of the race, something that they could have done without.

It’s looking like Sascha will start the race with a double stint (2 hours 40 min), being the most experienced driver with 24 hour races and Sean will follow with a double stint after that.

So, a dramatic start for the team already, but hopefully they will be a bit luckier in the race, stay tuned for a quarterly update (every 6 hours) throughout the 24 hour race starting at 4pm local time tomorrow!