The traditional 24 hours race in Spa-Francorchamps last weekend was already over for the MRS team after short seven hours. Already on Monday the crew from Lonsee traveled to Spa to adjust the McLaren MP4-12C for the challenging race track in the Ardennes. The MRS drivers Carlos Kray, Justino Azcarate, Ilya Melnikov and Philipp Eng shared the practice sessions on Thursday and tried several settings. The real goal for the qualifying, the participation of the best 20 at the Superpole, but the MRS team missed only shortly. A little problem with the brake balance was the reason why Philipp Eng could not reach the top lap times in qualifying. At the end it resulted in a starting position in the 23th grid in the starting field of 67 cars.
„Of course we would like to drive for the Superpole, but in principle the starting position in a 24 hours race is not essential, here it depends on the right strategy”, said Philipp Eng.
The MRS team still had the right strategy. After a good start, where Philipp Eng could stay out of all skirmishes, he drove his double stint exactly in the time schedule. With constant fast lap times and strategic wise pit stops, Eng reached to get forward in the first two hours full 23 (!) positions, before he handed the car over to the Brazilian Carlos Kray. At the end of the infamous “Eau Rouge” Kray befalls the same destiny as already two colleagues before him. On a bump the McLaren oversteered and hit heavily the crash barriers. Kray still managed with the car the long way to the pits, where the MRS crew immediately started to repair the car. Because of this visit in the box the team lost 12 laps and moved back to the 52nd position. Justino Azcarate and Ilya Melnikov could further move forward, however the McLaren again has to be pushed into the box for another repair service. There was a problem with the diffuser, at each pit stop it caught fire again and again. This repair has cost again some laps. After almost six and a half hours of the race Philipp Eng again took a seat in the cars to drive another double stint. After short time the MRS crew got a radio message that Eng had to park the car in the “Blanchimont” area without any forward movement, a secondary damage of the accident.
Karsten Molitor (team leader): „Of course we are all very disappointed, but that is motorsports. We already have run some 24 hours races, but Spa was a premiere for us. I was surprised about the pace, it looked like especially at the beginning of the race a lot of colleagues was not really informed about the duration of the 24 hours race. So it does not surprise me that at the end only a few participants saw the finish line. The accident of Carlos was bad luck, it can happen, we have to forget it and look forward. Thank you to our drivers and to the whole MRS crew who again did everything indefatigably. Now we prepare the season’s final of the Blancpain Series, the 1.000 km race on the Nürburgring and hope that there the bad luck will keep away from us.”
Source : MRS