"I wanted to win, so I’m not 100% happy, but getting to 3rd overall right at the end after an exciting fight was a good way to finish the race. It was great to see everyone in the team so happy and I would like to thank all the guys for the good job they did. We couldn’t have done it without Jos and thanks also to Michel and Armand for great and faultless driving and also being real team-players.
We were racing in Division 3, which means that we were not the fastest out there and we had to carry additional 150kg, which didn’t help. We opted for an intelligent strategy and we almost got the biggest reward for it. It was a very tough race like Zolder always is, but this time it was really tough when I did every 2nd stint during the night and 3 more hours on Sunday afternoon, but it was worth it.
The overall winner, NGT, did an excellent job and had no technical difficulties. They spent in total 23 minutes in the pits for their 15 stops. We were working on the car for more than an hour, 1h05min in total during our 21 stops. The 2nd placed First Motorsport Porsche’s total time in pit was 34 minutes. So, it’s fairly easy to say that those few long stops simply lost the race for us. The GT3 cars did the best lap times, but we had by far the best race pace throughout the 24 hours.
The end of the race was very exciting. About 2,5 hours before the end we were 4th and calculated that we need to do only one more pitstop just like the Ferrari in front of us. We were then about 1 min behind them and Jos was pushing to reduce the gap. We were a bit quicker, but not a lot. Then, Jos had to pit earlier than planned when he had a broken wheel. The pitstop was quick and we didn’t lose much time there, but it happened too early for me to finish the race without coming in for an extra refuelling… I got back on the track in front of the Ferrari, but the podium was not in our pocket yet, due to that extra stop at the end. I was really on the limit for almost 2 hours trying to build enough gap to be able to pit quickly and keep the 3rd place. I came in about 10 minutes before the end and got back on the track 12 seconds behind the Ferrari. That car was one of the fastest in the race, but in the end I was able to go quicker. I caught up with it a couple of laps before the end and passed Fred for the 3rd place."
