Spa WEC: Second Rebellion R-One allowed to take part in race

The #13 Rebellion-Toyota R-One, which is driven by Andrea Belicchi, Fabio Leimer and Dominik Kraihamer, has been given dispensation to compete by the stewards and will start from the pitlane after the rest of the field has completed one racing lap.

The second Rebellion was hit by electrical problems during free practice.

It completed a series of in-and-out laps in first free practice, and would have managed a flying lap had not Belicchi been called in for a pitlane speeding offence.

The car did not run at all in second free practice and a series of minor issues in the 30-minute qualifying session meant neither Leimer nor Kraihamer crossed the start-finish line to record a lap time.

Rebellion Racing team manager Bart Hayden said: "The stewards could see that we did leave the pits under our own power and that is why they have given us dispensation to race."

The #12 R-One qualified 12th in the hands of Nicolas Prost and Mathias Beche behind all four of the LMP2 cars that took part in qualifying.

The car, in which Prost and Beche are joined by Nick Heidfeld, completed 33 laps in free practice, as well as a further 11 laps during qualifying.

Hayden explained that he had no regrets about bring the R-Ones, which had completed just over 600 test miles between them ahead of Spa, to Belgium to take part in the race.

"They say that war accelerates development and being at a race does that too - it doesn't half focus the mind," he said.

"We are up against it for the Le Mans 24 Hours and I wouldn't want to be going there without having done a race beforehand."

The SMP Racing ORECA-Nissan 03 LMP2, which was crashed by Viktor Shaitar in second free practice and did not take part in qualifying, will take the start as the last prototype on the grid.