TCR World and life

10 SPA 500 Dutchteamwins theBelgianenduro THE RED CAMEL-JORDANS.NL CUPRA BEAT THE DG SPORT PEUGEOT The Red Camel-Jordans.nl CUPRA won the inaugural TCR Spa 500 race after leading nearly throughout the 23-hour race distance. The heavy rain that fell over the final seven hours prevented the winners from reaching the 500-lap mark and they completed ‘only’ 454 laps of the iconic Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. During the first hour the competition was very close, with five cars running nose to tail while fighting for the lead. Then Pepe Oriola took the lead on lap 14 and together with his codrivers – Tom Coronel, Rik Breukers and Ivo Breukers – built a comfortable margin that ended up being six laps over the DG Sport Compétition Peugeot 308 driven by Aurélien Comte, Julien Briché and Teddy Clairet. Both the leading cars had a smooth race in terms of reliability and made the same number of pit stops. The Peugeot proved slightly faster on the lap – Comte posted the fastest time of 2:34.616 – but fuel consumption made the difference, as the Dutch CUPRA was able to run stints of four or five laps more than the Peugeot in the dry. However, DG Sport Compétition and Peugeot Sport should be pleased, because the 308 TCR proved competitive on its first outing in a long distance race. The podium was completed by the TOPCAR Sport CUPRA of Julien Apothéloz, Mikel Azcona, Fabian Danz, Antti Buri and Kari-Pekka Laaksonen that finished ten laps behind the leaders and three ahead of the brilliant Viper Niza Racing CUPRA shared by the Malaysian quartet of Douglas Khoo, Dominic Ang, Fariqe Hairuman and Melvin Moh that won the PRO-AM class. Victory in the AM class went to the Peugeot 308 run by Burton Racing for Pierre-Yves Corthals, Caren Burton, Armand Fumal, Olivier Meurens and Philip Stéveny. Eventually eleven of the seventeen starters made it to the end; retirements were all due to incidents and only a