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August 3/6 SPA 24 HOUR (Page 2)

Qualifying for real was due to start at seven o'clock that evening. The track had dried but the weather was overcast. Bill Stilwell, the third of the Synchro team drivers, was the first out. He completed eight steady laps and returned a best time of 3.00.73. This was the team' s optimum time for the drivers in the race and would, potentially give them a good race result. Dave Allan finished the session and put the team up to 38th position of the 84 starters with a fine time of 2:53.74. However, the session was not without incident as he had to return to the pits with an electrical problem. As he had entered the pit lane from the wrong entrance, the marshalls made him wait at the top of the pit lane until the session had entered, effectively ruling out the last six minutes of the session. The cause of the problem was the fan belt, which had snapped and broken the crank sensor lead.

The second qualifying was at ten o'clock that night. Kevin was the first driver out. In the next two night sessions each driver had to complete three full laps. Kevin did eleven laps and dropped his best lap to the three-minute barrier with a time of 3:00.09.

Bill was the second driver out and had upped his tempo too, returning a best time of 2:55.94 during his five laps.

The final 45-minute session of the day started at 11.15. With the track still dry, Dave drove for the whole of the session. He completed thirteen laps and finished with a best time of 2:55.75. The team had dropped to forty-first place overall but the good news was that the car was still performing well.

The final qualifying session was set for the following day (Friday) and was due to start at 11 o'clock that morning. Dave again drove the whole of the session with the weather sunny but cloudy. Although bettering his best time, returning a 2:53.49, the Synchro team had dropped four more places to forty-fifth. However, all the cars that had improved to mobe above them, were the 400 bhp BMW M3's which were in the another class, so it was not as bad as at first it seemed. More worrying, though, was that the car had started to misfire, particularly whilst cornering. The car had gone out on low fuel but even after a pit stop, the Civic continued to misfire. It was decided to close the session when a red flag was waved with four minutes of the session remaining.
The computer had indicated that the fuel pressure was low. This would have certainly contributed toward the misfire. An adjustment was made but the team would have to wait until tomorrow (Saturday) morning to test out the theory.