D’station Racing driver Erwan Bastard shared his thoughts on the relationship between the Hypercar and LMGT3 cars after the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps involved two incidents triggered by contact from Hypercar machinery.
Speaking to Motorsport Week after the race, the #777 AMR Vantage driver said:
“Sometimes you see that they just dive too late and you have to let them go.
“You have to move out of the way or you are out.
“So basically, they just go in and they expect that you are moving out of the way, which is not how it works.
“… at the end of my stint, I was like ‘Okay, I don’t want to take any risk if I see a Hypercar. I’ll show him that I’m gonna move so he can go easily.’
“Because yeah, we saw with the WRT, because of the red flag, it’s not even his fault or he wasn’t even moving [left or right].
“The Cadillac just moved – changed lane without even looking where he is.
“So yes, they don’t want to waste time – we can understand it – but we are also racing, so we need to share the track.”
For the third FIA World Endurance Championship race at Spa, there was a major 1-hour and 44-minute stoppage following a collision between the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R Hypercar of Earl Bamber and the #31 WRT BMW M4 LMGT3 of Sean Gelael.
Bastard saw this incident first-hand and avoided the spree of debris which littered the width of the circuit before a red flag was called.
This marked the second of two significant incidents in which an LMGT3 car was taken out, specifically the second of WRT’s two BMWs.
Along with teammates Clement Mathieu and Marco Sorensen, the #777 resided in fourth position at the red flag, and so had conduct a pit [fuel] stop soon after the race restart.
D’station grasped P7 by the end when Sorensen brought the car to the chequered flag ahead of both Proton Ford Mustangs, as the other #27 Heart of Racing AMR finished outside the points in 12th place.
