In the fourth endurance race of the SSCA season, the #51 Chevrolet Corvette C6.R got everything right. Taking pole position and the GT class win, Wilfred and Marcel made no mistakes and lead almost the entire six hours from start to finish.
The beautiful track of Silverstone hosted the fourth SSCA event and this time round, Simracing For Holland entered both a GT and an LMP car. The latter as a tribute to the Racing For Holland, who drove an identical Dome S101 at Le Mans in the past couple of years. Preparation for the event proved difficult, as both teams struggled with their setups right up to the race.
The GT cars were the first to qualify, with Wilfred in the #51 car. Early morning practice sessions saw several teams clock times that were around Wilfred’s personal best, but when it mattered, he proved the quickest on the track, beating Orion Racing’s Shawn Purdy. Next up were the LMP’s, where Robin struggled for grip in the #151 Dome, qualifying in eleventh place.
The race started and in the first lap Wilfred had some small technical issues with the car electronics, temporarily dropping to third place. It did not take him long to regain the lead, pressuring Kevin Brents into one of many small mistakes that day and overtaking Rickard Hellsten in the Ghostspeed Corvette. After his scheduled two tanks, he lead the field by almost a lap, handing over the car to Marcel. Driving a steady pace without making mistakes, he slowly saw Kevin gaining time. Just before he could reach the leading car, Kevin had to go to the pits again for fuel and a driver swap. Sam Michaels took over and chased the #51 car, and about 15 minutes later, Marcel’s second tank of fuel had been consumed by the powerful small-block V8 engine. Wilfred took over again, temporarily losing the lead to Michaels, but knowing that Sam had two stops to go and Wilfred only one, it was a relatively simple run to the finish and Wilfred almost ended up lapping the second placed GT car in the final stages of the race.
Meanwhile, the #151 Dome had a rough race. Robin was pushing hard to get the car into the top 10 in the early stages of the race. He double stinted the tires to save some time in the pit lane, but since the Dome was using more fuel than the other LMP cars it was hard to make up ground. After two tanks he handed over to Filip who managed to gain a couple of places, only to loose them again after being hit by a GT car that braked way too late, requiring him to make an extra stop to fix the damage. Bad luck did not end there, as race control caught Filip cutting the track (something more cars were guilty of), having him do a stop and go. To make matters even worse, after that he got hit by another car, causing even more damage to an already beat up Dome. Finally, Filip made it to the pits for his regular stop and driver change, handing over the wheel again to Robin, who had only one mission: keep the car in one piece! Lapping faster than his first run, Robin managed to get the car up to 8th position before handing over to Filip again for the final run to the checkered flag. He managed to hold on to that 8th position, ending an eventful day.
Wrapping it up, it was good to see both cars finishing the race, scoring points for the championship. Next time all drivers will probably be back in GT cars again, as we visit the next track in approximately two months from now.