Dutch Speedtec Racing Team Wins Supercar Challenge at Spa-Francorchamps

Oct 14, 2011

Speedtec's BMW experienced some unfortunate race luck is sits in sixth place for the championship.

The Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, located in Spa, Belgium is best known for the Formula One Belgian Grand Prix and the Spa 24 Hour endurance race, last weekend however it was the venue for the Dutch Supercar Challenge. The Supercar Challenge features four classes, ranging from the Dodge Viper GT3, Corvette C6R and other large displacement GT cars, down to more "normal" street cars like the BMW 1. The classes are divided by a system of horsepower over weight ratio.

The Dodge Viper GT3, driven by Diederik Sijthoff, won both it's races at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.

Going into the weekend at Spa-Francorchamps, the K&N backed Dutch Speedtec Racing Team's Dodge Viper was only four points behind the series leader, an ex-works Corvett C5R.

"We had a good start in free practices and qualified P1, two seconds quicker than the number two car. Which is quite a big margin," Speedtec Team Manager, Robert Bleijenberg told K&N Race News. "But there was a lot of traffic, as there was a field of 65 cars."

In race one on Saturday the Speedtec Viper started on the pole, they set the fastest lap, "And after the mandatory pitstop, we had a comfortable lead and took home the victory," said Bleijenberg. "And to be honest, Sunday basically the same thing happened as we won again. So we had a good weekend, taking home all the points that were available, and we are once again leading the championship by four points."

The team Speedtec Racing Viper holds a four point lead going into the last race at the Assen circuit.

The owner of the Speedtec team is successful industrialist, Henk van Vliet, who's Etec Grondverzetmachines company supports their racing efforts. Loosely translated Grondverzetmachines, are earth moving equipment, the extra large type equipment used for highrise buildings. The team currently run two cars in the Supercar Challenge, the Dodge Viper GT3, which has been heavily upgraded to a 680 horsepower engine and a lot of very custom aerodynamics, is driven by Diederik Sijthoff. The second team car is a BMW E46, which is driven by the team owners sons, Nico and Peter van Vliet.

"With the BMW we had a good start on Friday to take fourth place in class during qualifying, using our new K&N air intake," explained Bleijenberg. In the race we were challenging for third place when the engine died on us. It seems that the crankshaft broke so we had to stop racing."

"Our season started at Hockenheim on the 10th of April and the last race will be at Assen circuit on the 23rd of October, added Bleijenberg. "So now with the Viper we are currently in first place for the championship, with our four point lead and with one weekend to go. Each weekend you can get 44 points so it's very tight." As a result of some "bad luck" the BMW currently sits in sixth place overall for the championship.

"We use the K&N air filters because they are the best in the market," Bleijenberg continues. "When Marcel (Blom) came to our workshop a few months ago we also saw a good opportunity to make our air inlets a bit better again and gain some performance through that side. We currently are looking into using K&N oil filters as well."

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