Gravel Roulette Four Corners From the Flag – Porsche Cup at Spa-Francorchamps

Some races you lose in qualifying. Some you lose at the start. This one I nearly lost on the toilet — and then actually lost on someone else’s gravel, four corners from the checkered flag.

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Buckled in with seconds to spare

Let’s be honest about the pre-race preparation: I missed the formation because nature called at exactly the wrong moment. I made it back to the rig with a few seconds left to strap in and roll onto the grid. Not quite the driver-change choreography you see at Le Mans, but it worked.

Qualifying: one track limit too many

Car #7, starting P7 with a 2:18.547. My second quali lap would have moved me up the grid, but a track limit violation deleted it. Spa gives, Spa takes. For context on how tight this 1994 SOF field was: pole to my P7 was covered by less than nine tenths.

Eleven laps of P4 vs. P5

Lap 1: dodged a big crash and settled in. From there the race had one constant — J.J. Leach in the #9. The pole sitter had dropped back into my neighborhood, and we spent the entire race trading P4 and P5. I passed him, he repassed me, repeat. Genuinely great, hard racing from the first lap to the last.

On lap 8, the #1 of Jacobo Lopez Lopez went off track and rejoined right in front of me — at that point I was P4, Leach P5. Nothing disrupts a rhythm like a car that isn’t your fight suddenly filling your windscreen. I lost focus, lost tenths, and Leach reeled the gap back in.

Four corners from the flag

Final lap. Then a gift: Leach ran wide at Eau Rouge, picked up a track limit violation — slow-down penalty. P4 with over a second in hand and my closest rival forced to lift? That’s about as safe as a position gets around here.

Four corners from the flag: gravel on the racing line, dragged there by someone ahead. Two cars in front of me slid on it. I slid on it. Cars behind me slid on it. The one driver who didn’t was Leach — who went from P5, slow-down penalty and all, past every one of us and finished third. I gathered it up, kept it off the wall, and brought it home P5, about two seconds short of the P4 I’d held for most of the race.

Over a second of cushion, gone in one corner I didn’t even contaminate myself. That’s motorsport. The D-BOX motion and Cubic belt tensioner made sure I felt every centimeter of that slide — immersion is non-negotiable, even when it hurts.

And as if the finish needed one more subplot: the fuel math was tight. Very tight. I sputtered into the pit lane after the flag with 0.1 liters left in the tank. Call it precision fuel strategy — the car and I have agreed on that version of the story.

Still: race-best lap of 2:18.523 (quicker than my quali lap), P7 to P5, +54 iRating. I’ll take it — and I’m already looking forward to the next one.

Race stats

Series	iRacing Porsche Cup by CONSPIT – 2026 Season 3
Track	Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
Car	Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) – #7
Start / Finish	P7 → P5
Best lap	2:18.523
Laps	11 (0 cautions)
Strength of Field	1994
Incidents	4x
iRating	2132 → 2186 (+54)

Full results

Pos	#	Driver	Start	Best Lap	Gap	Inc
1	3	Tim Gaudry	P3	2:18.237	–	2
2	2	Rodrigo Chinelatto de Aquino	P2	2:17.754	+6.120	3
3	9	J.J. Leach	P1	2:18.847	+7.749	11
4	14	Guanxi Liu	P4	2:18.452	+9.056	8
5	7	Philipp Geppl	P7	2:18.523	+11.239	4
6	5	Josh Adam	P8	2:18.638	+16.001	9
7	10	Jihwan Lee	P13	2:18.750	+17.568	9
8	1	Jacobo Lopez Lopez	P6	2:18.316	+24.873	12
9	4	Andrew Nguyen	P9	2:19.090	+25.965	4
10	8	Leo Xiong	P5	2:18.427	+34.209	20
11	22	Yao He	P16	2:20.352	+34.562	7
12	17	Tommy Kirkpatrick	P10	2:19.328	+42.203	7
13	6	Britton Greer	P18	2:19.856	+43.777	15
14	13	Aykut Arslan	P17	2:20.711	+48.203	0
15	19	Chan Ka Yip	P14	2:19.768	+1:15.850	5
16	20	John Tavernetti	P21	2:20.722	+2:14.150	3
17	16	Jordan Scobie	P20	2:19.434	+1 lap	14
18	21	Paul B Huddy	P11	2:20.164	+2 laps	9
19	12	Andrew Muse	P12	2:22.097	DNF	4
20	15	Paul Zuppardo	P15	2:21.384	DNF	9
21	11	Andre Colen	P19	–	DNF	17
22	18	Robert Sanders	P22	–	DNS	0

🎨 Livery designed by Jeremy Kerr on Trading Paints.