GTWC | Ferrari: 16″ enough to know about the closed pit lane?

It would have been another chapter of History with a capital H for Ferrari, which at Spa-Francorchamps would have fully deserved its third success in a 24h in 2024, after those achieved at Daytona (IMSA, with the 296 GT3) and Le Mans (WEC, with the 499P), but in this case the skill of the AF Corse-Francorchamps Motors team, in addition to the great trio Pier Guidi/Rovera/Rigon, was not enough.

If Lady Luck was blind, it should probably be added that bad luck saw us very well, but also that someone perhaps had a moment of… sleepiness when we were already on the home straight. But what exactly happened?

During the final pit stop of the 296 GT3 #51, Pier Guidi entered the lane, finding it blocked by the Lamborghini #19 of Hugo Cook, which had broken down. At that moment the GRT team boy had been hit by a technical problem that required a reset of the Huracan, unable to continue because the engine had gone into protection, something that had also happened to him at the previous stop.

Pier Guidi had to wait for the service van to arrive to tow the Bull’s car away in order to pass, as the entrance to the pit lane at Spa is a corridor delimited by two low walls; the thing that made all the men at Maranello extremely angry was the failure of the race direction to report the problem in time.

Pier Guidi himself had explained in the post-race, speaking with the journalists present in the press room including Motorsport.com (and told in yesterday’s article)who, if a warning had come, could have made an extra lap by postponing the stop by one lap, still having an adequate amount of fuel on board and without exceeding the driving time limit imposed by the regulation, despite being almost at the end with everything.

According to the news collected by Motorsport.com, which obtained the data from the race direction, it emerges that everything happened very quickly, in a situation effectively at the limit of anyone’s possibilities in understanding what was happening and the consequent action. From what emerges from the screenshot, here is the time of the events:

15:41:36 – #19 (Hugo Cook) ENTERS THE BOXES
15:41:52 – #51 (Alessandro Pier Guidi) ENTERS THE BOXES
15:41:56 – #51 (Alessandro Pier Guidi) ENTERS THE BOXES
15:42:20 – BOX ENTRANCE BLOCKED
15:43:34 – GARAGE ENTRANCE NOW OPEN

Cook and Pier Guidi found themselves separated by just 16″, and the second message announcing the entry of #51 is actually due to the fact that the Piedmontese had to move back slightly from the line where the limiter is inserted, trying to find a gap that wasn’t there (as you can also see in the video).

In such a short time, the stewards had to understand the situation, communicate it to the race direction and wait for the ok to intervene, while the latter warned of the problem that was in existence at that time. A procedure that must certainly be done as quickly as possible, but not so immediate. And perhaps (and it is worth underlining) with a little more reactivity, we would now be here talking about something else.

The tipping point could be the van that towed the Lamborghini away, according to Pier Guidi already at work and arriving in reverse when he turned the corner of the pit lane. Probably, having had to intervene previously for the same reason, he had remained on pre-alert, but this would also mean that the communications between the stewards and the race direction to act had already been initiated.

So it is not clear why, if the green light is given to a service vehicle to enter into action, it is not automatically communicated that the pit lane entrance is blocked. Which – according to the above data – occurred 28″ after the Ferrari’s arrival.

Probably also here it was a phase where a second more or less could have actually made the difference, for better or for worse. As in this last case it was unfortunately for Ferrari, with 50″ lost that allowed the Aston Martin of Mattia Drudi to take the lead and triumph.