Team Greenpower made a success in Belgium
Team Greenpower traveled to Belgium to take part in the SPA 24-hour Citroën C1 & CV2 Cup. It was a long journey by bus and trailer from the base in Vestby in Norway. 25 hours took the trip down!
In the depot, the English team Amigo Motorsport met up with the other car. It was the same car that was driven at Silverstone this spring.
The lineup for SPA was as follows:
In the English car Team Greenpower International with the drivers: Reid Harker (New Zealand), Daniel Störkersen, Håvard Kollen and Eivind Brynildsen.
In the Norwegian car Team Greenpower Basic with Formula Basic drivers: Daniel Kroken, Ketil Thomassen, Kjetil Kristiansen, Roger Iversen and Dag Wasmuth.
None of the drivers had driven on the legendary F1 track before. Everyone had a big smile when they got out of the car after their first test pass. - The course is ten times cooler than Rudskogen, someone said. The track has perhaps the most iconic curve in the world called Eau Rouge, which is a steep downhill followed by a cross uphill with a slight "chicane" in the bottom. In Formula 1, the cars have 320 km/h through this section, but the Citroën C1 is a little more modest and is content with 160 km/h!
148 cars drove the qualifying and they had to use both the new and the old starting grid to make room for everyone! The cars were divided into several different classes with both standard and very special cars. Team Greenpower drove in the English class for the Citroën C1 which is totally standard. 50 cars participated in that class.
The International team took an impressive seventh place in the qualifying! The basic team struggled with a little braking problem and strange road holding and took the 49th place. The Basic car was completely new built before the trip and had not been driven a single meter. After qualifying, they discussed a solution where they changed a caliper and tuned the rear suspension for better road holding.
On Saturday's warm-up, the car felt much better and they could drive several seconds faster, which felt good for the race.
The race started at 18.00 on Saturday. All CV2s were lined up on the old start grid, downhill towards Eau Rouge while all C1 cars were lined up on the F1 grid. They released the start in two rounds. With so many cars on the track there was traffic all the time.
Both cars from Team Greenpower drove stable and they picked placements all the time. During the night there were a lot of crashes and it became safety car many times. Team Greenpower managed to stay away from such problems all night.
In the morning, the International guys had moved up to second place, when unfortunately, they were torpedoed into Les Combes. The petrol pump broke and they had to get help from the tow truck to get back to the pits. It took almost a quarter. Once in the pits, it took only four minutes to change the petrol pump and they could continue the race, but they had lost many placements...
The basic guys were now ahead of them in the list and it was an exciting ending. When an hour of the race remained, the International team had managed to catch up to Basic, but then International had a pit stop left to make… Team Greenpower Basic finished in 13th place and International in 15th place. Only six cars out of the 50 starters in the class broke the race. It is a very durable car that lasts most of the time and there appeared great damage and a lot of tape on many of the cars, but the Basic car went to finish without a scratch!
The drivers were very pleased and happy with the adventure, but after finishing the next 24-hour race begun with the bus to get home…
Team Greenpower was there to see and learn even more for the new racing series to be run in Scandinavia next year where the crown of the work will be the 24-hour competition "Swedish Lapland" the first weekend in August at the Drive Center in Fällfors.
Bengt-Åce Gustavsson - www.racefoto.se
