8/22/98 - Dave Kaemmer dominated Thursday night's Papy Cup race at Spa in the same convincing fashion in which he dominated the previous week's race at Zandvoort, although this time Rich Yasi snatched fast lap while in hot pursuit of Dave. Rich left the race lap record at 3:21.18.
Kaemmer stunned the field in qualifying, quickly putting up a 3:20. Then, casting caution to the wind, he went for it and posted a 3:19.52, which as far as I know is the fastest lap ever turned at Spa in GPL. Here are the top ten of the 16-car field:
At the start, Dave blew away into the lead, while behind him the field made a surprisingly orderly start, with none of the carnage that many observers anticipated as the cars funneled into Eau Rouge. Hine made a mistake at Burnenville, running wide and spinning into the fence, but miraculously recovering after dropping only two places to eighth.
Tony Johns kept Kaemmer in sight until lap 4, when an altercation with a spinning Ferrari at Blanchimont delayed Tony's Lotus, and allowed Rich Yasi through into second. This put Tony, Shawn Wise, and Matt Sentell within sight of each other, but Matt spun at Malmedy shortly thereafter and dropped back some distance, although he retained fifth place.
At this point the order was Kaemmer, Yasi, Johns, Wise, Sentell, Randy Cassidy, Kevin Wasson, Scott Sanford, Alison Hine, and Roy Fleck, Hine having lost 8th place to Sanford after another spin on the 5th lap. On the same lap, Sanford slid wide at Blanchimont, allowing Hine past into eighth.
Wasson's Eagle and Cassidy's Ferrari battled mightily for some distance until a slight mistake by Cassidy at Haute de la Cote let the Eagle through for 6th, though the two remained in close company. Fireworks ensued, as Wasson slid wide at Malmedy, allowing Cassidy alongside, and the inevitable collision as the two dove for the apex of the left-hander left Kevin the worse off as the Ferrari recovered more quickly from the trip into the fences. The duel continued.
On the next lap, Sentell had a pleasant surprise as he came round Blanchimont to find Wise's Eagle sideways across the track, and after a hairy moment avoiding the recovering Eagle, moved into fourth.
By now, Alison had the bit well and truly between her teeth, taking the Eagle around at 3:25.87, while a spin by Randy under braking for La Source allowed Kevin's Eagle to move past and put a little distance between itself and the Ferrari. However, a huge spin by Wasson exiting Masta allowed Cassidy to close the gap, but Randy was unable to capitalize as he executed virtually the identical maneuver!
Moments later, Hine dove under the Wasson machine into Stavelot in an extremely dicey maneuver, with the Eagle laying rubber and trailing billows of tire smoke as Alison put two wheels on the grass on entry and then chucked the car sideways, scrubbing off just enough speed to avoid skating off the outside into the hay bales.
This put Alison into 6th, the place she would hold till the end, though Kevin made a brave attempt at outbraking her into La Source at the end of the lap, a maneuver which left him on his head after hard contact with the hay bales!
Tony Johns got caught up in an incident with a slow-moving Ferrari on the run up the hill to Blanchimont, which allowed Sentell into third, and thus the order of the points finishers was set. Tony stayed very close to Matt through the final laps, and Rich Yasi kept Dave Kaemmer in sight through the end.
The long fast corners of Spa proved an excellent place for several of the NASCAR drivers to stretch their legs and get into a rhythm. Shawn Wise is one of the very fastest drivers in the extremely tough top level of the OSCAR online NASCAR championship, and his stock car expertise is beginning to blossom into real speed in the Grand Prix cars. I suspect that before long Shawn may be challenging for a podium finish in a Papy Cup race.
All in all, it was a fascinating race at the magnificent Spa circuit.
Now, on to France!
The final results:
Fastest Lap 20 R. Yasi LOT 3:21.18
Dave Kaemmer: "It's all in the gearing. I've found you can go really hard, set a good time, and then tweak the gearing a little and go a second faster."
Matt Sentell: "Darn! Now I'm going to have to practice! But Dave is good on the fast circuits, but I can beat him on the slower ones. Let's see what happens at Rouen."
Alison Hine: This race felt much more like a real race to me than Monaco and Zandvoort, with far fewer crashes - and much more time running alone. I was frustrated by my own mistakes, and am sure I could have finished closer to Shawn had I driven a cleaner race, although I am not sure I would have been able to improve my position.
I am only able to play the replay from lap 4 onwards on my machines, although I believe Matt captured from lap 2. Perhaps I am limited by having only 64 mb of memory (it wasn't so long ago that I thought 32 mb was an extravagance!) Anyway, I was able to review many of the interesting incidents in the race for this report. A replay is much better than a video, because you can follow any car throughout. The downside is that you can spend hours reviewing a single race!
Perhaps the most stunning thing to me of the entire meeting, aside from Dave Kaemmer's qualifying lap, was that Dave told us after the race that he had done a 3:22 while testing in the Brabham!
"It's all in the gearing," he said.
Amazing.