Group C racing at Spa Francorchamps is something I wouldn’t miss for the world. To bad there weren’t many competitors, only 8 group C cars turned up. And unfortunately there were no Porsche 962′s, but one of my favorite cars, the Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-8 was again racing at Spa. Driven by Justin Law it won the race, just like last year. These cars may be 20 years old but they still fly. Justin Law’s fastest time on sunday was 2:18.15. Last year the fastest lap during a Belgian GT race was set by a Mosler MT900, it managed only 2:25.812. The current Le Mans series cars are ofcourse a bit faster, during the 2008 1000km of Spa a Peugeot 908 set the fastest lap at 1:59.069, an average speed of more then 189km/h.

I was very surprised to see a Ferrari 250 GTO parked on a trailer in the pits. You don’t really expect to see a car worth several millions of Euro’s parked on an open trailer. I had a good look at it but couldn’t tell if it was the real thing or just a replica. When I came home and googled the number plate I found this. So technically it’s not even a Ferrari but a Datsun, what a disappointment. Still it’s one of the best looking Datsun’s I have ever seen.

730 photos from sunday in this gallery.

First post of the year With some nice weather forecasted I planned a trip to Spa. Roadbook organized an open pitlane trackday at Spa Francorchamps. It was the first time they did this and it was quite a success. Roadbook are the organisers of the Spa summer classic and the Spa 6 hours, both events for historic cars. So I didn’t know what to expect. Some nice historic racecars showed up but also some more recent cars, like a Ford GT. I was also very impressed with some other very fast American machinery, 2 new Mustang racecars and a couple of Corvettes. Lots more interesting cars, like a very rare Healey SR and Lancia Stratos can be seen in this gallery.

Probably my last trip to Spa Francorchamps this year, as the winter is coming. It was just a bit to cold to spent the whole day outside taking photos. The clouds didn’t help much to take nice pictures. I deleted loads of photos that I had taken in the morning, they were all to dark and had to much noise. Marc Duez test days as this track day is officially called attracts a very wide variety of cars. Ranging from humble Seats (which sponsors this event) to the serious track machinery like the Porsche GT3 RS. Some more exotic machinery also, my favorite being the Venturi 400GT pictured above. Not the first time I have seen it at Spa. A Ford GT is always a nice sight, and very rare in Belgium. Audi was presenting the R8 to a select bunch of people, several R8′s were driven around the track showing them what it can do.
843 photos in this gallery