Sam Dejonghe calls Spa a weekend to forget, with sixth the best so far

Team WRT’s Sam Dejonghe rescued a sixth place finish in the first sprint race at Spa-Francorchamps for Team WRT in their SEAT León TCR, after his co-driver Denis Dupont took damage at the start of the qualifying race in a crash with one-off team-mate Rob Huff, putting the #7 SEAT at the back for all of today’s sprint races.

“In qualifying, I had all purple sectors, but then in last sector my spring broke,” said Dejonghe to TouringCarTimes. “So we were already on the back foot. Then in the qualifying race, my team-mate had a get together with Rob Huff and got a puncture. I got out and set the second-fastest time but it wasn’t allowed.”

Dejonghe drove through to pick up key points with sixth, but an incident at the start of the second race means Dejonghe and Dupont sit down in tenth position on just eight points after the first three races of the weekend.

“In the first race, I had a good start and I got to sixth place, but didn’t have the ideal set-up to go any further. In the second sprint race, I bogged down a bit at the start, then the two cars behind me touched each other and one went into my side and broke the front wheel.”

With a number of one-off entries this weekend as a pre-Spa test for TCR International, with Stefano Comini, Jean-Karl Vernay, Rob Huff and Mat’o Homola all non-TCR Benelux regulars, the Belgian remarks on the affect this has had on the meeting.

“This meeting is strange, as the world’s best touring car drivers are here,” he added. “It almost looks a bit stronger than TCR International, OK, with less cars, but the quality is high. If you look at just pace during practice I was quite happy driving compared to these guys, but of course points are points, so we lose.”