The third meeting of the Belgian GT Championship MVD is being held at Circuit Zolder this weekend. As compared to the first two meetings there will only be one race tomorrow, in fact held over two hours as compared to the usual two races of sixty minutes. Today the teams enjoyed two qualifying sessions of 45 minutes each and after an intense battle Jeffrey Van Hooydonk in the A+ Racing Dodge Viper came out on top and will be on pole tomorrow. But once again the GT3-philosophy proved its strength, seeing the entire top-10 are within one and a half seconds, and as such it promises to be a nail biting race tomorrow.
The first session, held just after lunchtime, had only just kicked off when Jeffrey Van Hooydonk in his first fast lap clocked up an impressive 1.32.631. The former single-seater driver has now fully mastered the A+ Racing Viper and literally squeezed everything out of the American GT3. Behind him and pretty close there were various Porsches, Mosler and Ferrari, but Jeffrey managed to finally retain his pole.
During the first session the various protagonists tried everything to get a place up front on the grid, as there was a threat of rain over Zolder. Behind the Viper we had the Mosler MT900 of Ron Marchal and Vincent Radermecker, the NGT Porsche 997 GT3 Cup S of Couwberghs and Maes, the Francorchamps Motors Ferrari F430 GT3 of Fred Bouvy and Damien Coens, whilst Eddy Renard and Vincent Vosse in their Sport Garage Ferrari 430 finished up in fifth spot. Championship leaders Longin and Kumpen registered a sixth best time, still within a second of the unleashed Van Hooydonck.
It was equally exciting in Division 3, as the top-3 are split by a mere three tenths of a second. Jurgen Van Hover in his Speedlover Porsche 997 finally proved to be the fastest. The Powercars Racing Porsche 996 of Van Oost came out on top in Division 2.
During the second qualifying session the competition put A+ Racing under pressure. Bert Longin pretty quickly clocked a 1.32.728, but the driver from Leuven in his Mosler couldn’t improve on that. However he did come up from sixth into third place, resulting in the Gravity International cars starting from second and third place on the grid tomorrow.
Behind the top -3, under a threatening sky, there were hardly any changes. Here we find the NGT Porsche (Couwberghs-Maes), the Sport Garage Ferrari (Vosse-Renard), the Francorchamps Motors Ferrari (Bouvy-Coens), the GPR Porsche (Soulet-Franchi) and the G&A Mosler (Kenis-Mattheus). The G&A Mosler was the first car having to yield more than one second on pole (+1.003), emphasizing once more that the Balance of Power does in fact do its job.
Jeffrey Van Hooydonk: "I reckon I must have called on 95% of the Viper’s potential. We can’t go very much faster than that, but it was sufficient for us to clinch out first pole-position of the season, and in fact the fastest time ever of a GT3. I’m really over the moon with this result."
In Division 2 and Division 3 respectively Van Oost-Maes in the Powercars Porsche 996 and Keen-Coleman with the Chad BMW M3 GTR will be starting as first.
Lastly we need to mention that Bert Van Rossem will be teamed up with Peter Van Audenhoven in the Speedlover Porsche 996 this weekend, and that Menno Kuus and Wim Coekelbergs will be competing with a Porsche 996 Cup emanating from the PMB team.
Starting grid:
1. Van Hooydonk-Dierick A+ Dodge Viper (1.32.631),
2. Radermecker-Marchal Gravity International Mosler (1.32.725),
3. Kumpen-Longin Gravity International Mosler (1.32.728),
4. Maes-Couwberghs NGT Porsche 997 GT3 Cup S (1.33.006),
5. Vosse-Renard Ferrari F430 GT3 (1.33.205),
6. Bouvy-Coens Ferrari F430 GT3 (1.33.268),
7. Soulet-Franchi GPR Porsche 997 GT3 Cup S (1.33.535),
8. Mattheus-Kenis G&A Mosler (1.33.653),
9. De Laet-Verbergt JD Competition Lamborghini Gallardo (1.34.096),
10. Kris Wauters-Vanthoor AD Sport Dodge Viper (1.34.207) ...
- SRO - also photos
