It was the penultimate round of the Le Mans Cup as 360 Racing arrived at Spa Francorchamps, with high hopes for both Terrence Woodward/Tommy Foster and Mark Richards/Belen Garcia.
Richards was 11th quickest in qualifying, “I got one clear lap but I just wasn’t pushing hard enough to get a better time,” he admitted. Woodward was further down the order too than hoped with 15th place.
It was a good start for Richards, making three places on the opening lap, but it was chaos behind with collisions at the La Source Hairpin.
Woodward had managed to escape the chaos to come through 19th, but the safety car was out and stayed out for another 20 minutes before the race went live again. “Terrence did well to avoid it all, but had to take to the gravel,” said Foster.
“I made a mistake at the restart, I had gone ahead of two cars through the bus stop before the start, so gave them back to avoid a penalty, but five cars went by,” said Richards as he slipped to 12th place.
There was just four minutes of racing before the safety car was out again to repair tyre wall damage, which, brought the opening stint right up to the pitstop window.
Woodward came in on lap 11 from 13th to hand to Foster and Richards came in a lap later to hand over to Garcia from eighth place.
After the stops were completed and yet another safety car intervention, Foster had the lead from lap 15, but was being caught by United Autosports Boyd.
They were barely inches apart along the Kemmel Straight on lap 20, taking Les Combes side by side before Boyd edged ahead.
