The ‘big one’ has arrived for the 2024 Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS: like always at this time of the year, the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa attracted the attention of motor racing fans from around the world, confirming its status of the greatest GT racing event in the world. 

It wasn’t the centenary race that the Oman Racing Team by WRT had wanted. Since the initial sessions, it was clear that the #30 was lacking the pace and speed to fight for victory and the race proved it.

Track action at the Ardennes venue begun with Free Practice for Sam, who shared car #30 with Ahmad Al Harthy, Jens Klingmann and Calan Williams in the Bronze Cup. The first session clearly confirmed a lack of pace, and the team were doing intense work on car set-ups, rather than seeking performance.

Qualifying was relatively disappointing and it proved the challenging task ahead for the BMW M4 GT3 when they only managed to take P11 in the Bronze class.

It was a very clean start of the 24h race with no incidents and performed well with Jens at the wheelclimbing two positions by end of the first lap. The first full-course yellow occurred on Lap 15, due to one of many incidents throughout,  with the Safety Car later on that was really just a chance to bunch the field and warm tyres but it didn’t last long.

When the full darkness of night came down at Spa-Francorchamps it started to become pretty wet.This became the ultimate challenge of the event and here’s how everybody ran at the start of the seventh hour. The rain began getting heavy, just on the cusp of 23:00 local and Sam, who were behind the wheel, pitted for wet tyres. The rain was only getting worse and everybody lined up behind the Safety Car for 1h45m that was more than enough for one night.

The team opted to take the technical stop early in the race to give themselves more strategic flexibility in the final third of the race.

Another Safety Car was called upon at 06:05 when it was still very wet and then it also made for a rather foggy Spa-Francorchamps. 

The morning would bring more disappointment. Calan was behind the wheel and was running eighth in the class when he had to retire the car at the 18^th hour, after a consistent race. He stopped along the track with a total loss of power and was forced to retire due to no oil pressure. The race was over for #30.

Sam De Haan: “Overall, we faced significant challenges with the car setup during Free Practice and the Qualifying sessions and despite our best efforts, we struggled to achieve a satisfactory balance in the car. However, we implemented substantial changes before the race, which undeniably took us in the right direction.

Our race strategy was straightforward: adhere to track limits, avoid mistakes, and steer clear of any contact. I believe we executed this strategy flawlessly, as we managed to avoid any track limit penalties during the 18 hours we were competing. Unfortunately, an engine issue after 18 hours forced us to retire from the race”.