Fresh from a soaking wet Silverstone BTCC event, Jake Hill made the journey to ‘one of the greatest tracks in the world’ the spectacular and historic Spa-Francorchamps in the Ardennes forest in Belgium.

He travelled to Belgium to race in the Spa 6 Hours Historic, where the weather seemed to have followed him over the English Channel as heavy rain greeted the 80 car grid for the weekend.

Hill was invited to race the Era Motorsport-prepared No.18 Ford GT40 alongside team owner Kyle Tilley and twice winner of the 6 hours – including last year in a GT40 – Miles Griffiths, and would take to the track in the car for the first time for the first qualifying session on a dark and very rainy Thursday evening.

“Driving in the dark, and in the rain, the challenge that is Spa-Francorchamps, 80 cars of massively varying performance and one of the most demanding sports prototypes of it’s era – any one of those things would have made my first run pretty interesting, but all of those together made it really tricky. Probably one of the toughest things I have done in a race car for a very long time”

After team-owner Kyle Tilley took to the track, both Jake and Miles turned really solid laps – Miles getting a clearer lap with relatively little traffic to put the No.18 machine P7 on the grid, but a Penalty applied for Jake leaving the pit lane in the wrong manner saw that lap deleted and the car classified P10.

Friday evening’s qualifying was in even wetter conditions which saw no one improve times, but gave Jake some more valuable time in the car, resulting in him commenting “The car felt much better than yesterday, plus I had time to discuss the car with the team, so overall a much nicer run”

With Kyle starting Saturday’s 6 Hour race just before 4pm local time and on a dry track, he immediately battled his way up to P8, and was sitting comfortably in that position when after 18 laps was forced to pit with an issue with the throttle, dropping down the order.

Charging back into action Kyle began to make time up, and handed over to Miles during a Safety Car, also taking on fuel and seeing Miles immediately making progress before a stop for a recurrence of the throttle issue and a problem with the rear hub.

Despite the delays, the No.18 car looked competitive and as the rain fell, Miles began setting lap times comparable with the leaders and was back up the order, handing over to Jake with just over 2 hours remaining.

A number of Safety Cars prevented more progress, but once in clear air Jake impressed with lap times amongst the top-three during his stint.

However the issues with the rear hub caused brake problems, forcing him to stop on track with a seized caliber, eventually bringing the car back slowly to the pits where the team reluctantly made the decision to retire the car after 5 hours.

“Gutted for the team who have worked so hard. Such a great experience racing this amazing car on this fantastic circuit, and with two really superb team-mates, but it just wasn’t our year. Thanks so much to Kyle and the whole Era crew for the opportunity – hopefully we will be back next year”

Whilst at Spa Jake was also asked to race James Hagan’s Era-prepared Oreca 03 LMP2 Prototype from 2011 in the Masters Endurance event.

In a damp free practice one Jake shocked the regulars by topping the times by over 2 seconds, and in qualifying was looking strong before a puncture halted progress having set the 6th fastest time overall and fastest in class.

James raced the car on Friday morning with Jake racing solo on Friday evening, however the notorious Spa weather struck, torrential rain forcing the officials to cancel the race on safety grounds.

“Such a great opportunity – big thanks to James and Era for asking me to drive – absolutely loved driving this car, completely different to the GT40 of course – and a real shame the race was cancelled, but even on the out lap it was impossible to see, so it definitely was the best decision”

One other very special treat came earlier in the weekend, when on Thursday morning James Hagan asked Jake to shakedown his 1974 Hesketh 308 F1 car in practice for the Masters Legends F1 event, taking in a few laps in the car that Won the International Trophy at Silverstone in the hands of James Hunt, the team’s first Win in Formula One.

“What an honour. I have been lucky to drive a few F1 cars now, but this is a bit special. My Dad is the biggest James Hunt fan, and absolutely loved Hesketh as a kid, so much so that one of the reasons I am No.24 in BTCC is because this car ran No.24 with Hunt back in the day. James (Hagan) very kindly also let my Dad have a sit in the car and it totally made his day!”

Jake now will focus on the final weekend of the 2024 Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship on the Brands Hatch Grand Prix Circuit, where he jointly leads the Championship in his Laser Tools MB Motorsport BMW 330e M-Sport.

“We have had an amazing season. 7 Wins and 13 Podiums so far, and the car and team have been fantastic. I go to Brands having not only raced at Spa, but also taken my Nissan Skyline around the Nurburgring on Wednesday, and now to my all-time favourite circuit, Brands Hatch GP – so feeling really sharp and very prepared for what will be a tense weekend for sure.”

“But I am feeling confident we have everything we need to get the job done. Huge thanks to the team, our partners and of course all of my amazing friends and fans for their support. Really can’t wait”

The final BTCC round at Brands Hatch GP circuit on 6th October is shown live on ITV4, with qualifying on the 5th live on YouTube.

Images courtesy of Andrius Laucius for Era Motorsport.