By Irina Boyarskaya
Photo: Akis Temperidis
The day the Porsche Carrera Cup France race was taking place on the Spa Francorchamps track, a little girl – all curls, bows and frills – was riding on a fancy merry-go-round in a beautiful city park thousands of kilometers from Belgium. She got off the carousel galloper and pronounced with an unexpectedly hoarse bass:
- Ooh! Adrrrenaline is boiling in my blood!
It is the best characteristic of the race in Spa, the game-race, we think. That's what we mean by getting in hair.
It was hot and sunny on the weekend. That's (from the viewers' point of view) what a perfect racing weekend should be. The list of participants was significantly extended in comparison to Catalan round: 28 crews with their nerves on the start! The nerves revealed themselves already on the qualification, where one of the drivers (what an adrrrrenaline!) hit the fence flooding of about a kilometer of the circuit with the antifreeze substance from the broken heat radiator.
Nevertheless, Alexander Jouannem achieved the fifth starting position for both races, but Oleksandr Gaidai succeeded only in the first qualification, but it was a real success – pole position in Division B and an extra scoring point:
"I was driving pretty well in the first qualification. Although I entered the traffic of a very slow driver on the fastest lap and I felt that I lost a lot there. I enjoyed the car and tried to demonstrate the good result.
The race was supposed to be very difficult, and many drivers were about to have trouble with wheels on the track. There is a section where the vehicle should often be shifted from one turn to another. And if a car loses grip you can lose a lot of time there.
I think there will be questions with cut-offs in the race – there were some even in the qualification. But they are penalized relatively hard here."
We were about to feel it first-hand. But it was in future, and at the moment it was Friday, May 6, and the start of the first race of the weekend.
Julien Andlauer failed to follow a bend (adrrrrenaline!), passed the apex straight, but in the last moment decided to turn at a right angle having braked. The problem was that his exit trajectory crossed those of the competitors who were inside the same turn at the moment. A close amicable meeting of Andlauer and Oleksandr Gaidai, who had managed to overrun Florian Latorre till that moment, took place in the point of intersection. The result of this meeting is the U-turn of Andlauer hit by Koen Wauters and Yannick Hoogaars at the same moment, and Gaidai lost speed, position and downforce on the front bumper broken with the Andlauer's car.
The situation was more calm in the beginning of the peloton: Vincent Beltoise and our driver Alex Jouannem were competing for the third position from which Jaap van Lagen had started. Van Lagen, however, was not going to stay out of infighting, all the three drivers were exchanging with attacks involving also Mathieu Jaminet. The same old and inconceivable Matteo Cairoli was leading the race. Starting from Monza, he has been demonstrating absolutely fabulous and even inexplicable pace.
Carlos Rivas – the driver who caused the logjam in the first race of the season, having deprived Oleksandr Gaidai of the chance to compete for the podium – demonstrated the rally cross and the track races skills simultaneously again: he was pushing exactly as in WRX, and the trajectory was made as it was suitable for the track – two straight lines and two curves, not taking such nuances as circuit turns into account. The penalization of Rivas for the cut-offs was increasing flyingly: 5, 10, 20 seconds...
By the way, the penalization for cut-offs is really hard here and the referees have no intention to understand if a driver made an intentional cut-off of a mistake. The Belgian organizers think that the participants have to suppress their adrrrenaline. Many drivers were given the five seconds of penalization, and even Oleksandr Gaidai did not avoid that:
"I was pushed outside in the penultimate turn, and I had no way to go. My mistake was that I accelerated too early."
The race was coming to the end – the time seemed to fly differently in Belgium. Joffrey De Narda was on the third position, and Alex Jouannem a second and a half behind him. Alex Jr. reduced the gap to 0.7 second on the penultimate lap! 0.7 second and one lap to the podium really gettings in hair!
The duel between De Narda and Jouannem is won by the adrrrenaline! Younger age, less experience and driving hours multiplied by the huge striving for success just two minutes to the finish is unfortunately the exact formula of leaving the track in Spa. De Narda was on the podium, Jouannem – outside the circuit, and, unfortunately, for a long time: at least for the race of the next day, because it was impossible to give the original configuration and speed back to the car till that time.
But Oleksandr Gaidai won the bronze podium in the Division B!
Porsche Carrera Cup France 2016, round 2, Spa-Francorchamps, 06-07/05/16
Race 1 (overall)
1. CAIROLI Matteo (Ebimotors) 12 laps
2. JAMINET Mathieu (Martinet by Alméras) +11.179
3. DE NARDA Joffrey (Sébastien Loeb Racing) +22.016
...12. GAIDAI Oleksandr (Tsunami RT) +43.698
...24. JOUANNEM Alexandre (Tsunami RT) +1 lap
...28. PIRON Pierre (Mediacom) +1 lap
Race 1 (Division B)
1. LAPIERRE Christophe (Sébastien Loeb Racing) 12 laps
2. LINDLAND Roar (Sébastien Loeb Racing) +5.129
3. GAIDAI Oleksandr (Tsunami RT) +9.242
...6. PIRON Pierre (Mediacom) +1 lap
So, Oleksandr Gaidai started the second race of the weekend in Spa Francorchamps in lonely pride – we mean the absence of his teammate by that, because 27 drivers on the start may hardly mean loneliness. Only 26 of them started, however, because Nicolas Misslin had the false start (adrrrenaline, you know!) and was penalized with pit lane crossing.
Carlos Rivas observed traditions and pushed Jörn Schmidt-Staade outside the track. The latter represents the team with an unforgettable name for anyone who is not a native speaker of German: JSS Beteiligungsgesellschaft GmbH (now try to repeat it!).
Oleksandr Gaidai engaged in an interesting and complicated competition with Dylan Derdaele and Christophe Lapierre, and even 5 seconds of penalization for the cut-off (Oleksandr hadn't even noticed it) did not influence on anything – the gaps were too significant, and Lapierre also received the penalization, so they continued the competition.
And at that moment the adrrrenaline entered the game.
O. Gaidai: "I was trying to overtake Lapierre, entered inside the turn and understood that he would just hit me he next second, that's why I sharply put on the brakes when steering the wheel. Of course, I made a U-turn."
Gaidai lost of about half a minute and removed on the 22nd position. Nicolas Misslin was in front of him, and the former had a chance to find himself behind as judged by Gaidai's mood...
But at that very moment (adrrrenaline!) Cristophe Lapierre collided with Koen Wauters. By the way, if we mention the Belgian driver's name for the second time in relation to accidents in Spa, it will be fair to say that he is a well-known singer and TV presenter.
So, the meeting of the Belgian singer with the French gentleman driver ended up with the safety car on the track. It not only fixed all the participants on their positions, depriving them of the opportunity to make overruns, but also turned all the gaps between the competitors into a pumpkin. And till then every penalization (and there were a lot of them, the marshals in Spa are very severe) was the loss of the great number of positions.
Unfortunately, there was no chance to regain them: the race ended up with the safety car regime.
O. Gaidai: "The competition proceeded well, I was successful. But I am disappointed with the result, of course. The weekend was rather mediocre for the team. Honestly, I was not performing on my level today.
We have to take our advantages from the race, to understand that circumstances alter cases, because the things can be moving in different ways, and we have to move on."
Porsche Carrera Cup France 2016, round 2, Spa-Francorchamps, 06-07/05/16
Race 2 (overall)
1. CAIROLI Matteo (Ebimotors) 12 laps
2. JAMINET Mathieu (Martinet by Alméras) +0.336
3. DE NARDA Joffrey (Sébastien Loeb Racing) +0.950
...25. GAIDAI Oleksandr (Tsunami RT) +35.812
27. LAPIERRE Christophe (Sébastien Loeb Racing) +3 laps
Race 2 (Division B)
1. LINDLAND Roar (Sébastien Loeb Racing) 12 laps
2. VAN HOVER Jurgen (Speedlover) +3.330
3. VAN DE GRIJSPAARDE Menno (GP-Elite) +5.423
...15. GAIDAI Oleksandr (Tsunami RT) +17.679
...17. LAPIERRE Christophe (Sébastien Loeb Racing) +3 laps
P.S. After all, we brought the cup from Spa!