CrowdStrike Spa 24 hours

Lamborghini Factory Driver Sandy’s bid for outright Spa 24 Hours victory hit by electrical gremlins. Lamborghini factory driver, Sandy, was denied the chance to fight for the overall victory in the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa when his GT3 race car suffered a rare electrical failure with just over three hours remaining.

Partnered by fellow Lamborghini factory drivers, Italian Marco Mapelli and Frenchman Franck Perera in the No 6 Huracan GT3 Evo2 prepared by the California-based K-PAX Racing team, Sandy, the 23-year-old from Forfar, had delivered a series of impressive stints, lapping comfortably at a pace which matched the leaders.

But with just 3 hours 20 minutes of the race remaining, Mapelli was forced to pit as the car suffered an electrical failure.

“The car had been losing battery voltage and the condition of the electronics was going to get dangerous, so Marco had to pit,” Sandy, personally backed by Huntly-based Black Bull Scotch Whisky and Tunnocks, explained. “The crew immediately set to work to repair the car. When they took the floor off the bottom of the car they could see a wire that was actually broken. It had sheared and we weren’t getting any electricity from the alternator back to the battery.”

“They did a brilliant job to get the car running again, but the delay cost us eight laps and obviously put us out of contention. “It was a real pity because we knew we had a super fast car. We qualified fourth on the grid of 71 cars and posted the fastest lap time in the race of all the competing Lamborghinis.
“We also ran comfortably in the top six for much of the race before a couple of 30-second penalties for exceeding track limits dropped us back a bit.”

“The team fought back through the night and the morning, and just 30 minutes before the technical problem we’d got ourselves back on the lead lap. “We really thought we might have a crack at a top five position, and definitely a strong overall result, if things went our way over the closing stages but it wasn’t to be.”

“Every time K-Pax Racing has raced in the Spa 24-Hours, they’ve finished it, so it was important to everyone that the car was repaired and we got back on-track. I did the final stint in the race to bring the car home and maintain the team’s record.”

Sandy returns to action in three weeks when he heads to Portimao in the Algarve for the next round of the Intelligent Money British GT Championship.