Five hours into the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, the #91 Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R is fighting through. The heat is the story of the weekend, and a broken air conditioning unit has left the cockpit baking. It has not slowed them down. The car sits around 30th overall and sixth in Bronze, with Mathieu Jaminet now at the wheel.

Ralf Bohn shrugged off the conditions. “The temperature outside is certainly extraordinary, but bnside the car it’s always, let’s say, 55 degrees or something like this, so not a really big change,” he told GT REPORT.

The heat, then, was the least of his worries. The #91 picked up a penalty early on, and Bohn is still in the dark about it. “We have been punished by speeding under full course yellow. I don’t know the reason so far,” he said. What followed made up for it. “Then I had a very clean stint as there was close to no car in front of me. Had a good time and I could close up.”

The start had been a different matter. A big shunt unfolded on the opening lap, right ahead of him. “A lot of races with so many cars there is a high risk of a crash in the first laps. Here, the first corners went well, but a little bit later the big crash came and it was 150 metres in front of me,” Bohn said. “I wouldn’t say easy, but I could pass whatever flew around. I could avoid to drive over, so no contact.”

Avoiding trouble is one thing. Pace is another. The real headache is straight-line speed, and Herberth have been down all weekend. “Don’t make any more mistakes so that we don’t get punished. Get the best out of the car, as we’re missing straight-line speed all weekend, massive to the other cars. About 10 clicks on the main straight, and this is so much different,” Bohn said.

One thing could still shake up the order. Bohn would take rain, even if the team is not banking on it. “The rain is always good for the Porsche itself and brings the race to a new level,” he said. “But the engineers don’t expect rain, maybe by the end of the race. We take the weather we get.”