ORANGE1 FFF Racing Team by ACM completed its maiden Spa 24 Hours. The Chinese squad faced a weekend difficult as expected, not scoring a podium for the first time this year. The Belgian marathon wasn’t one of the easiest in history, with over 70 cars at the start and one of the longest race suspensions on Sunday morning due to the heavy rain. Still in the fight for the 2019 Blancpain GT Series title, the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO faced a challenging race. After ensuring a slot in the Superpole and being the only car fielded by Lamborghini Squadra Corse car to achieve this, Dennis Lind took the start from 10th after a time penalty imposed by race control for not respecting the proper slot. During the race, three drive-through and a puncture forced the car to loose the leadership taken by Andrea Caldarelli in the first hours, with Marco Mapelli 8th under the chequered flag.Some set-backs also hit the #519 car driven by Phil Keen, Frank Perera and Giovanni Venturini, which was victim of traffic in qualifying, although showing a great pace especially on slick tires with dump track, but in such an inconstant race, to recover positions in a clear stint proved almost impossible, and the 21st final place is a positive result for the big effort of the whole team.It was a difficult race also for the Silver Cup car #555. With Michele Beretta at the wheel at the start, the young guns’ car recovered positions, while Taylor Proto in the second stint drove for just few laps due to the long neutralization periods. Giacomo Altoè suffered a brake issue which costed the team more than five laps, but the heavy crash occurred to Diego Menchaca, in very difficult wet track conditions, and yielded the final retirement after 224 laps completed.
Fu Songyang, ORANGE1 FFF Racing by ACM Team Owner“I enjoyed living in first person the Spa 24 Hours, it is always a great experience, despite this wasn’t the most exciting race in history. On our side, we learnt a lot, as it was the most difficult weekend of the season but it was something that somehow we had to expect in our maiden season in the Blancpain GT Series. We need some more experience and this is what we are gaining as a team, but we will not change our approach for the remaining races of the season”.
