BELCAR SHORT NEWS 2006-05-05 – BSN12
In contrast to what was announced in earlier Belcar Short news, the Mosler of G&A will only arrive in Guino Kenis’s workshop next week. Meanwhile the car has arrived in Europe, and is at Martin Short’s Rollcentre workshop. Martin Short takes care of the distribution of Moslers in Europe.
After the arrival in Belgium, G&A will have to look after the engine, a BMW V8, and its development. Other main issues for the team are the oil pump and the engine installation. The Mosler will be ready to test by the Wednesday before the second race. If the building up of the Mosler or its testing runs late, Kenis-De Keersmaecker could still race the BMW 130i at Zolder. The team examined the latter after the DNF at Spa. Vibrations at high revs caused the problems with the transmission and this should be resolved by the replacement of the entire driveshaft.
Michaël De Keersmaecker lately also became father of a healthy daughter Juna-Jane. The youngster proves to be more than just a driver…
Another absentee at Spa was the ex-WTCC class-3 BMW 3-series of the Euroracing pair Joosen-Vroman. As parts of the car arrived late, the team was forced to remain on the sidelines.
It was even more bizarre that Christophe Pampel’s team was present for the Belcar Endurance Cup with both of its other BMW. The team’s ex-STC BMW almost entirely burned out one week before the race. The team, successful in last year’s Zolder Touring Cup, rebuilt the car but missed a good opening of the season in Spa due to electronic gremlins. But the team will fight back.
The duo Joosen-Vroman is sure to be a challenger for the bunch of Porsches and the Ultima in the Belcar Original class-3. Nothing less than a podium spot is the ambition for the Belcar Home Race at Zolder, in two weeks’ time.
In the Belcar Endurance Cup, the pair Pampel-Van de Valk goes for overall victory while Stehr-Noolen hope to finish within the top-3 of the class-3 with the BMW 325 DTC.
Bert van Rossem and Fred Bouvy are promoted to class-2 of the Belcar Original with a PSI Porsche 996 GT3-RSR. CEO Racing will enter the car with technical assistance from the team from Thimister.
“We are lucky that Penders-Lamot failed to finish in Spa, as we think that they will be our main rival in class-2,” explains Bert Van Rossem. “We will now start wit equal chances and our title ambitions are intact. Depending on what happens throughout the season, we will enter the RSR or a class-3 GT3-Cup for the Euphony 24 Hours of Zolder. I still regret the misunderstanding of the last race. Fred was leading strongly, but had to do a splash and dash two laps before the end of the race, as I came in too early for the driver change. We lost an almost certain victory.”
SRT and PSI Experience are both performing very well in the French FFSA-GT. After two meetings and four races, we find three out of four Belgian Corvettes in the top-4 of the championship. The PSI C5-R of Alliot-Hallyday is second; the C6.R of the flying Finns is third and SRT claims fourth with Christophe Bouchut and Yvan Lebon.
While PSI already was victorious on two occasions and ended up the podium four times more, SRT actually obtained two third places. But SRT also proved its strength as Bouchut was leading the last race for the majority of the distance. Yvan Lebon only lost it in the closing stages of the race.
Meanwhile the Oreca duo Ayari-Hernandez is leading the championship, after two victories in the opening rounds of the series at Nogaro.