David Perel has known two outcomes at the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa: disaster and victory. The South African has contested the race 10 times, three of which have ended in a class win. The other seven? For the most part, they're a tale of broken dreams (and GT3 cars). Perel has lived the highs and the lows of the world's biggest GT race.
This year was one of the good ones. Driving the #45 Rinaldi Racing Ferrari alongside his regular Endurance Cup teammates Rafael Duran and Dylan Medler – as well as Italian veteran Alessandro Balzan – Perel claimed victory in the Silver Cup class. This was a remarkable giant-killing effort as the little Rinaldi squad beat Team WRT and AF Corse, two of the biggest teams in global sportscar racing, to secure the win.
It was particularly significant for Perel, who became the first driver to win three different classes: he triumphed in Am in 2017, Pro-Am in 2018, and Silver this year. He also racked up more time behind the wheel than any other driver, spending an astonishing 10 hours and five minutes on track. This is his story of the race.
"We really struggled during the Prologue. All the teams run a new engine at Spa, but I told Rinaldi that we needed to bring it forward to Monza, to see if the top-speed issue we were suffering from was engine-related. We did that and we had a really good Monza, which gave me a lot of confidence.
"Then we went to Spa and the first test on Tuesday was good, but when we started practice on Thursday morning... man, we were not good! So [team boss and lead engineer] Michele Rinaldi went back to a setup from last year, and with that we were back on the pace. I thought that if we could be in the top 35 in combined quali, I'd be super happy.
"Rafa and Dylan were both doing their first 24 Hours of Spa. Qualifying there is super tough but they did a really good job in their runs. The real surprise was Balzan, who hasn't really raced much this year but put in a time that was close to the top. I was fairly happy with my lap, but it wasn't perfect. We ended up P34, but only the top 32 went through to Superpole.
"We were kind of happy in one way, but still a bit disappointed to just miss out. I like the new Superpole format, because it gives more cars a chance. But I said to my engineer, David, ‘There's no way that of 120-ish drivers, one hasn't made a mistake. Someone will get their lap times deleted.’
"I couldn't sleep that night, because I just had a feeling that we were going to be in Superpole. I barely slept – which is not good for the weekend of the 24 Hours! I woke up the next day to a message from David at like six in the morning saying we were through and to get ready."
Perel went into Superpole with the objective of being around P25. He missed this target by some distance – in a good way. The Rinaldi Ferrari qualified 13th overall, which became P11 on the grid once penalties had been applied.
"That was just amazing, especially for Michele Rinaldi," says Perel. "He's such a racer. He's so passionate about drivers. He gave me a shot when I was a nobody, he gave Nico Varone a shot when he was a nobody and now he's racing in Formula 2. There's a whole bunch of names that Michele has given opportunities to. He's a tough team boss. Like, he'll come on the radio mid-stint and say: 'Hey, that's good Bronze pace!' It's his way of saying wake up."
Despite being way up the 69-car grid, the Rinaldi squad was only second in the Silver Cup class. Looked at very simply, they had 24 hours to pass one car. Of course, the race is never this simple. Perel would take the start.
"I've done the race 10 times now and I think I've done the start five or six times. Until this year, it was always from the bottom 40, so when you're going into La Source the race has already started! To be at the front was awesome; going down into Eau Rouge for the start was sick. And it's a big relief because you're a bit further away from potential trouble.
"We started off really well. We had pace. I think by around eight or nine on Saturday night we were P1 in class, P9 overall. Our aim for the whole race was that if we put an inexperienced driver in the car for one hour, we had to follow that with an experienced driver for two hours. We wanted to stay on the lead lap for as long as possible because of the new blue flag rules. You're no longer just thinking about position: you're thinking ‘lead lap, lead lap, lead lap!’"
Then, disaster struck :not long after Perel's stint, the car dropped to P47 and – more significantly – one and a half laps off the lead.
"Because I've had so many heartbreaking moments in this race, I felt like it was over – we were not getting one and a half laps back. Our engineers, David and Jörg, were instrumental in keeping me motivated. They had the idea that every time there was a full-course yellow and the pits were open, we'd do a three-second [fuel] splash and extend the driving time. But that meant me and Alessandro were going to do a lot of driving." [David used a more colourful phrase than ‘a lot’ to describe the amount of time he would spend behind the wheel.]
"The breakthrough came when the leading Porsche lapped me. I was able to run at their pace and kept them in sight for 30 minutes. Then there was a safety car, and the Porsche came into the pits to do a driving time reset. The safety car picked them up and I was able to drive all the way around to the back of the field.
"I basically got my lap back, and now all those cars at the back were getting blue flags – so the blue flags were finally in our favour! When the race restarted, I had to overtake, like, 20 cars just to get close to the top three in Silver. It was like a parting of the ocean because of the blue flags. By the end of my stint, we were just within sight of the #52 [AF Corse] Ferrari.
"I gave the car to Balzan, who did a phenomenal job and overtook for P3. While that was happening, the leading McLaren got a stop-and-go penalty, which basically put them out of the race, so now the BMW became the leader. Balzan gave me the car back for my final stint with an hour and a half to go.
“The BMW was only 10 seconds ahead but to be honest, because of how hard the race was and how much driving me and Balzan had done, I was already so happy to be on the podium. When the team said the BMW was 10 seconds ahead and it's a WRT car I thought, ‘Well, we're not catching up!’
“But then the gap started to come down… 9.8 seconds, 8.7 seconds, 7.2 seconds. All of a sudden, he was right in front of me. It was only when he was right there that I started to believe.
“Still, I couldn't overtake him; he was fast in the right places. I tried twice and was little bit brash, if I'm honest, but he always gave me the space, so full respect to the driver [Ignacio Montenegro]. But then he stopped a little earlier than expected. The team came on the radio and said, ‘Listen, Dave, you've got three laps. Drive as fast as you possibly can to try an overcut.
“I was thinking, ‘He's got new tyres. He's just going to rip it. But we were able to do three laps where I managed to pull in front by a second and do the overcut. So, when I gave the car to Belzan for the last 37 minutes, we were a second ahead.
“He actually pulled even further ahead to win. In the end, everything that we needed happened in the last few hours – during the space of a normal GT World Challenge Endurance race!”
Talking to David, it's clear that a big part of his satisfaction comes from winning for Rinaldi.
"Michele just wants to race. It's phenomenal. It's so rad to have someone without ego in racing. You don't even see him when his car wins – he never goes on the podium. He engineers our car, he drives the truck to the races. In fact, after Spa, he drove the truck to Le Mans for the Le Mans Classic. Isn't that crazy? Michele is just so passionate."