The 2016 racing season is well underway!

After a long break from racing, we are finally on the brink of starting up the 2016 racing calendar again!

To me, the off-season has been of the greatest sort and provided with a real treat in the shape of my first ever multiple-race GT3 contract, with Walkenhorst Motorsport powered by Dunlop! To be given the opportunity to work with and drive their brand new and spectacular BMW M6 GT3 feels absolutely absolutely crazy and somewhat unreal, but at the same time I am so thankful for the opportunity. Generally, to make the step into international GT3 with a top level team has been a huge dream for me ever since I entered the racing scene, and to now realize this together with Walkenhorst is pure gold. But there is more, as we will field a very strong line up of drivers this year: alongside Swedish young gun Victor Bouveng I will also share the car with British DTM driver Tom Blomqvist! Victor already contributed to the teams’ title in the GT3 championship at the VLN Endurance Championship last year, and Tom really needs no further introduction as a current factory driver for BMW in DTM. The ambition is to mount a proper fight to the factory teams in the races coming up this season, and with great trackside support and tires from Dunlop, as well as a highly skilled team of mechanics and engineers at Walkenhorst, we are well equipped for the challenge!

The first test of the season was already successfully finished yesterday, after an intensive 2-day program in Spain. Our first impression of the car is very, very good, and I look a lot forward to take this absolute beast to the Nordschleife later in March!

Finally I have many people and partners to thank for finally making this step, but especially two teams have been instrumental in the process the last years. First of all, Norwegian based Møller Bil Motorsport gave me the chance to have a good taste of international racing on a high level, when they handed me a possibility to drive their VLN-SP3T categorised Audi TT back in 2010.

From running out of sponsorship money in 2009 and seemingly having to end my racing activities, they brought my career back on track again – which I am forever thankful for. Moreover, all the experience and knowledge they shared with me that year inspired me to continue chase my dreams within racing, especially as we won a race together against far more experienced teams in the last race of the season. The team is going strong as ever today also, being a regular front runner in the very same category in the VLN series at the Nurburgring!

Another and very special thanks goes to LMS Engineering, at which I had a fantastic ride with from 2011 to 2014. Despite being very inexperienced when I joined, team owner Andreas Lautner gave me all kinds of opportunities to work with every single detail of our racing package in a very professional environment – which quickly gave a me a strong analytical base to work with. I am simply incredibly thankful for the time I had together with LMS and all the things I got to learn and experience there – not many private teams with limited resources would give such an opportunity to develop as a driver today. In the end I am very happy to see that our collaboration proved to be quite fruitful, taking home two championship titles, several lap records and over 25 class victories with my teammates over the period.

Now it’s time to look ahead though, and convert all those hundreds of hours of physical, mental preparation and former experience into, hopefully great, results on the track. Can’t wait!!

See you all very soon!

Cheers,
Chris

 

2016: New and awesome challenges await

Hi everyone!

It’s been quite a long time now, but the winter has been extremely busy – especially with regards to my preparations for the season. I’m very happy to say that I am fortunate to have the most exciting racing year yet on my hands, and I am looking a lot forward to tell you more about that quite soon!

As you know I had great fun last year with my very first race in a GT3 car, after being given the chance  to race the Premio SLS with Dunlop tires alongside WTCC champion Rob Huff, Kenneth Heyer and Phillip Frommenwiler at the 24 hours of Nürburgring. We came home 10th overall among a string of the best GT3 drivers and teams in the world, a result that we were all very happy with as we crossed the finish line. The goal this year is to build well upon that result-wise, knowing the package that I’m so incredibly lucky to join this year!

Preparation wise I’ve had my best off-season yet to date, logging a lot of hours in the gym and outside running with a specially made program for racing. I’ve also emphasized quite a bit of work in a wide range of simulators this winter, which a lot of other real life drivers seem to use quite a bit of time on as well. It’s amazing how far these sims have come in terms of mirroring the real thing, both with regards to track detail and the actual feeling of the cars. Will be cool to test the actual transition between real life and sim once the season comes to a start now in March!

Looking forward to come back with more news later, and also to see you all on the race track later this season!

Best,
Christian

Thoughts around speed limits and the Nordschleife

Hi everyone!

Since I posted my race report from the 24-hours of Nürburgring on Monday, I’ve had quite a few people questioning me about the much discussed matter of speed limits at the Nürburgring – which was inserted as a safety future following the tragic accident at VLN 1 earlier this year (read more about it here). I don’t usually do these kind of posts, but this time I have reflected a bit on the matter and following is my take on the case.

Photo: YouTube.com
User: mmoedas55

As probably any other 24-hour contestant I was quite excited as to how it would feel with speed limits at a race track, something that in my mind certainly didn’t feel well placed next to the thought of racing when the news sprung out. Generally speaking I had two major questions:

1. How/and will it actually affect the joy of racing on the Nordschleife?
2. What about the drivers who would need to have a constant look at the speed dash through the speed zones? Can it even be done in a secure manner?

Beforehand of the weekend I was mostly concerned about the second point. More than anything because I knew how much I’ve been concentrating in the code-60 zones in earlier years. Since neither of the cars that I drove in the SP3T cars had speed limiters for these specific zones, we always had to monitor the speed manually. I recall that especially the first year, I found it quite hard to look at the track in front of me during the zones to keep within the allowed 60 km/h. And even though revs are a helpful tool to recognize where you are speed-wise, I always had this small concern on being too fast anyway – resulting in a near-constant look at the dashboard. It’s a challenging mix; on the one hand, you want to be as close as possible to the 60 km/h limitation (a few meters lost results in quite a bit of distance lost once you go racing again), while on the other hand you need to be truly vary and careful of the people and cars that often are on track. As long as you don’t have a pre-installed speed limiter to aid the first part, you’ll have two mental opposites that constantly works against each other during these slow zones. Although with a few incidents over the years, the implementation of code-60 zones has proved to be successful I’d say, which to me in turn prove that drivers put safety first. Personally speaking, it has however always been some sort of an unfavorable challenge to keep both safety factors and “competitive” factors as optimized as possible, at the same time.

Please note that I am fully for the code 60 implementation, and that I, despite my thoughts above, fortunately never experienced any drama during these zones or received any penalty for that matter. However, with new zones at considerably higher speeds, namely 200 km/h and 250 km/h – how on earth would racing drivers manage all the factors involved now? I could imagine myself in a GT3 car looking at the dashboard before Flügplatz, trying to not loose time, driving as close as possible to 200 km/h, having a look at traffic, passing a car, over the jump, look at the dash, look at the corner entry, look at the dash, the corner entry, the dash, the traffic, the racing line, the dash.. Although maybe a bit over-exaggerated, you get the picture. Would it really be a “safety feature”, as the decision group called it, or would it just provide more stress for the drivers out there, resulting in a less-safe racing environment in the end?

Weeks later I found out that I would never really know, since the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 from Team Premio had a speed limiter prepared for all the different speed zones. It was a convenient detail for me and my teammates, but I still had my thoughts as to how it would be to navigate among cars that were busy watching their speed through these zones.

Two weeks later I know by myself that the thoughts above didn’t really strike my mind once during the entire event. As a driver, my job was to make sure that I pushed that button on the steering wheel every lap to limit my speed, and after a lap or two the fact that I drove through zones with speed limitations blended in among all other factors you need to consider as a driver during a lap on the Nordschleife. It was just part of the whole package this weekend. Indirectly, that answers point 1 as well; I had fun, heaps of fun. The field still felt just as competitive as before, everyone were just as hungry for results as before, and generally I heard very little to no chat about it in the paddock. It resulted in me forgetting the whole thing, even in the report that I posted on Monday – it didn’t play any role with need of much mentioning. Had it been a frustrating factor I am sure I would have posted it, but it just wasn’t. Now, this might be colored by the fact that this was my first try in a GT3 car ever, and there were a lot of new things to learn and discover that might have “muted” the speed limitation-factor. Ask another more experienced driver on the Nordschleife, and you might have a different answer.

I did however learn from my own experience last weekend, that I was a whole lot more tense over the new rules beforehand of the race than after. I can understand that some of the spectacle and purity of racing at the Nordschleife seemed removed from a spectator-point-of-view with these zones, but from a driver-point-of-view I experienced everything else than that. The competition and tension among teams in this race felt electric, and hopefully that was visible for the audience as well. The cars still charged hard as ever during the entire race within the few limits discussed, and it was still an awful lot of fun for this newbie in the GT3-circus.

With regards to the cars without any speed limiter and capability of reaching higher speed than the allowed speed in the different zones -you all made flawless work there. As for myself I had an easy job out there with just a button to push every now and then during a lap, but I never ever saw a situation in the speed zones that reminded me of my concerns before the weekend. Maybe it wasn’t as much of a challenge as I expected after all.

Talking from my own experience from this years’ 24 hours race, I am just happy that there was found a solution for GT3 racing on the Nordschleife. If it’s the best possible solution is a subject for discussion I guess (I am not taking part in that one), but to me it actually turned out to be better than expected. As with everyone else I am however also hoping for this limitation to be only temporary, and that we will have the possibility to go at full speed  on 100% of the track later on again. In the meantime, if today’s solution is what keeps the whole spectacle running on this superb track, I’m in.

– cheers, Chris

Team Premio and the 24-hours of Nürburgring

Cutting it straight to the chase, this weekend had it all. Not only results-wise, but personally I went through the whole wide spectra from being super nervous to somehow very confident, and everything in-between an awful lot of times throughout the race weekend. Just as expected actually!

I came down to the track on Wednesday afternoon, and come to think of it, it was over six months since I had been at the track for the closure of the 2014 season. Additionally this was going to be my first time in a proper GT3-racer; the great looking Mercedes SLS AMG GT3. As typically for 24-hour races I was to share the car with the following prominent driver line-up: Kenneth Heyer, ex. WTCC champion Rob Huff and Philipp Frommenwiler, which all were a pleasure to meet Wedensday afternoon. Already from the first hour we were all busy with a whole lot of activities, though especially Huffy who was double heading this weekend with both Team Premio’s efforts, as well as the WTCC round at the very same track.

Personally I enjoyed the paper checks, equipment checks, chats with people I had not seen for a long while, sitting in the car and visualizing, photo shoots, as well as just walking around and watching the area coming alive.. The excitement in the whole paddock is nearly worth the trip alone, and is certainly something that you won’t encounter many other places around the world. Each year massive resources are being pumped into this event for most teams, counting heaps of time with testing, evaluation, evolution, and then it all comes down to this one hell of a long race. It certainly establishes a tense, though nice ambiance for the event, in which I thoroughly enjoyed the whole weekend. As for our own situation, it was not quite like that however. Team Premio had been put together approximately four weeks before the race, and we’d had no testing to get acquainted with the car and team beforehand of the weekend. We did however have strong backing from MCG AG who handled the car, as well as a very experienced crew of engineers and mechanics that all were well known to prominent GT3 machinery in the past. The situation definitely labeled us as underdogs compared to the factory teams from all the various manufacturers, and quite frankly I didn’t know what to expect either. Nor from myself, the car, or from our competition out there – but it seemed as if everybody in the team were confident that we were able to pull off a good one.

Thursday started with a team meeting, where we went through a whole lot of important points before track action was to start. Just to learn all the buttons and procedures in the car at pit stops and more was a bit of work of its own, apparently. Luckily it’s all very neatly designed in the SLS, and moreover our race-engineer Jarek Janis was very clear over the radio as to what to do at each single pit stop. Goal-wise we were aiming to stay out of trouble and make our stints as according to our race schedule – and steadily climb the latter as high as possible. We were running a competitive development series of tires from Dunlop, but because of most of the drivers’ rather low knowledge of the car, we knew that we would never compete on ultimate performance with the factory teams and our sister SLS’. Consistency would in other words be our key to success this time around.

Kenneth made our first outing with the beautifully wrapped SLS and was very happy after his first laps on the legendary track. A little bit of understeer, but it was still early hours. I made the last outing in the session, but halfway through my first lap heavy rain poured down over the Nordschleife – exactly what I had hoped wouldn’t happen. I was however given rain tires for another lap and came in again with valuable wet-track experience after another lap out there. Later that evening, in the first qualifying session, I was again given another shot at improving my confidence, but once again the weather turned sour. This time I was however given rain tires on a steadily drying Nürburgring Nordschleife, and I completed three laps at which I felt a lot more comfortable than at my first two ones. My team mates were however charging hard to secure a spot in the top 30 qualifying, with particularly Huffy making a string of great lap times towards the end of the night-session.

Everything would however be settled on Friday morning, and Huffy improved our best lap to an 8:31 – well inside the top 30 list. Not only did it qualify us into a spot in the spectacular top 30-session later that evening, but maybe most importantly of all it gave us that well known blue light in our windscreen – which is of real value while overtaking cars at night. Basically it’s “communicating” to the car in front of you that you are among the 30 fastest cars on the track, and it would indeed prove to be helpful as darkness took over later in the race.

Since Rob was busy with his WTCC duties Friday evening, Kenneth Heyer would do the top 30-qualifying for us. Sadly things ended a bit earlier than we had expected, as contact with one of our competitors ended the qualifying one lap too early. We were however within the top-30, and the car was looking good already a few hours later after impeccable work by the Team Premio mechanics!

Race day

We were set for the race! I remember going to bed quite early on Friday eve, but I didn’t sleep too much before the clock rang again Saturday morning. I had driven my laps as according to schedule, but I really didn’t feel confident in my own pace anyway. I was however very lucky to have three very quick team mates who I aimed to learn from as the race progressed. I’d also watched Kenneth’s top 30 session lap over and over again, which hopefully would prove to be worth it as the race started.

Huffy would start the race for us from 30th position, and already lined up our car on the grid at around 14:00 local time. The following two hours impressed me just as much as it had done the earlier years I’ve been part of the race. At certain moments it’s almost hard to see that you’re on a race track – the amount of people that are there is just maassive! And with good reason I’d say: fans are allowed to walk right next to the cars, and well, if you want to you can always have a chat with a few DTM or WTCC champions – they’re all there on the grid. Not many races allow this elsewhere in the world, if any.

Well, as the race came closer we moved towards our lounge above the pit box, where the whole team followed the start. Huffy came really well out of the crucial first couple of corners, and soon after he had advanced two positions. As competitive as the field was, passing was really difficult, although it seemed as if he had quite a bit more pace than those closest cars in front of us. As he closed in on the one hour mark I was told to get dressed by Jarek, and 10 minutes later Huffy came in for our first pit stop. I was excited as ever, but the sole focus was to get out there and search for a good rhythm right away. Soon after rain hit the Nürburgring Nordschleife, and we opted for rain tires directly. Three laps later however, the track seemed to dry up again, and I pitted again for a fresh set of Dunlop slicks. Coming out on the track again the #23 Rowe racing SLS showed up in my mirrors. I quickly let him pass, hoping to learn a thing or ten as this would be my second dry lap with the SLS ever. Together with the Rowe car I found a good rhythm, and quickly found out that it was possible to push far more on certain areas than with the TTRS that I was used to driving in 2014. As the first laps went by the Rowe car slowly opened a gap on me, but I could sort of monitor the distance every time I reached Döttinger Höhe, which turned out to be a very nice motivation for the coming laps. The more laps, the better the feeling, and the less time lost to the white and yellow SLS in front of me. After seven laps I headed for the pits and changed drivers with Philipp, who stormed out to start our third stint of the race. We had played things well in the changing conditions, and rejoined the track at 23rd position. Moreover I felt a lot better in the car now, and was free of all the nausea I had before the race started.

As the race progressed we kept putting in solid stints, and despite being a bit unlucky with some of our predictions of the weather conditions we came through the night without a single major problem. Hammering through the night with these GT3 machines is by the way something I’ll remember for a long time. Things get a bit calmer out on track traffic-wise, but our competition did by no means slow down – and neither did we. Driving more or less the same lap times as we did during the day on Saturday eve, you get even more of a feel for how quick these cars really are. It was great, and just massive amounts of fun.

My last out of four stints in total was started at around eleven on Sunday morning, and with all the driving during the night it was great to finally have another stint on fully fledged slick-tires while the sun was up. The car was still in good shape despite a minor shunt during the early morning hours, and for the first time things felt more natural – as if my mind started to get in line with all the sounds, the movement of the rear-wheel drive, and all the other things that I wasn’t confident with hours earlier. In summary it was a bit easier to relax and focus more on the driving itself, which in the end gave me a couple of decent laps without too much traffic. One of them was an 8:30, sadly we didn’t get into the 20’s. Philipp, Kenneth and Rob kept charging on as well, and in the end Rob closed off a fantastic 24-hours race for us in 10th position. It was a lot more than I had expected before the race started, but everyone from engineers, to mechanics and drivers had made a flawless job. Knowing that we hadn’t really touched the setup on the SLS during the whole weekend, as well as the short time of preparation prior to the race, we were all really happy with the end-result.

Finally I’d like to thank my team mates, the whole crew at Team Premio for their excellent work the whole weekend, Dunlop, as well as everybody else of those involved in helping me into this wonderful opportunity! Check back here for more news later on, hopefully I’ll have more promising plans to present to you by then.

Cheers, Chris

A new season is underway

Finally it’s 2015, and I hope you all have had an amazing Christmas time! Personally I put closure to another exciting year of racing, in which I was fortunate to work with a great team of drivers, engineers and mechanics in a very competitive car. As you might know it all started with a blast in which we had satisfactory speed at the earlier stages of the season, but several quite unlucky events and strong performances by our rivals in the SP3T category prevented us from achieving the results that we wanted.

However, the way that we later turned things back in favor of us in the #303 TTRS has made the 2014 season clearly the most valuable racing season I’ve had so far. The results that we achieved in the spring wasn’t too bad, but with the low amount of time that we were given to optimize the suspension on track according to the 2014 regulations, we struggled to find a setup that worked as well as we wanted to begin with. The solution was to break down every part of our performance enhancing work into small parts, and make small steps over the course of the season that, fortunately, led to considerable success in the end. Furthermore, LMS Engineering probably have two of the most competitive heads/team leaders in the field in Andreas Lautner and Thomas Rechenberg, an important factor leading to all the cheers in the last three races. Somehow I always sensed that we would enjoy a lot of success at some point in 2014, just by talking with these guys. Incredible stuff, and a pleasure to work with. Finally, and although well improvable, the 8:27.79 at VLN 9 as well as our three victories felt as a sweet testament to all the work was put into improving the car over the course of the season.

Overall 2014 was a year with a lot of highly entertaining action. Both with regards to the core development of the car, but also with regards to the competitive side of things. Since I was fifteen years old I have worked extensively with my mental performance, and with the competition that we faced this year I had the chance to test a lot of different approaches to each and every competition. How I react to different mindsets, focus points, positions on the track, different settings and much more – but more importantly how it all can be improved. Fundamentally empowered by the hunger for more success, it’s truly an entertaining and exciting subject to work with, and is something that I will continue doing and learn from in 2015. And with regards to those latter few words; this year is shaping up to be another very exciting season. More news about that will be published later, but until then, have a great few first weeks of the fresh year!!

Cheers, Chris

VLN 10: final race, final success

Wow. I cannot believe that the season is over already. I swear that our first tests for the 2014 season feels like yesterday, which is quite baffling to be honest. Sadly, racing is not a full-year activity in northern Europe, which became very clear to us by the ice-cold autumn weather at the Nurburgring Nordshcleife meeting us this weekend. On the plus side though, cold temperatures means more power especially for the turbo-based engines – which just happen to be the case for the LMS Engineering Audi TTRS2. With the 8:27 still fresh in my mind from VLN 9 I was optimistic for another top time, but the main goal was however to finish the season in style. Moreover Georg, Stefan and I were of course keen to continue our streak of victories from VLN 7 and 9 (VLN 8 was cancelled due to fog), and somehow make up for our quite tough start to the season. We were always competitive in the first part of 2014, but a streak of unlucky events crashed our hopes victories over and over again, turning out to be quite frustrating at one point. You can read more about it by browsing the archive on the righ-hand side of this page. However, with good help from the engineers at LMS Engineering, we knew that we had a car that was much more sorted out now, and the two last races had been true proof of that.

As always we made our obligatory laps on Friday evening. The car felt great, as it had done the last three to four races. However, the latter has not always been a regularity earlier this year. After a promising test at Einstellfahrten in the pre-season, it was also clear that we had areas we could improve on. Therefore we tested a lot of different suspension settings, and at every race we had a new setting or configuration in there. Thanks to many clever heads at LMS Engineering we managed to proceed with success at nearly every step we made along the way, but at the same time it was hard to adapt to a “new” car nearly every time we hit the track. the TTRS2 is a fantastic machine to drive, and through many parts and sections of the Nordschleife we are just as quick as any GT3 car would be. I’d say that it is very easy to drive on its limit, but then again it’s very sensitive to setup changes. With every angle you change to the rear wing, both harmonics and the handling of the car could change drastically at high speeds. With every click you do either way on the shock, the front axle might react completely different to each section of a turn to what it used to be in the previous stint. And it’s very, very easy to go backwards in terms of performance.. As I said, you need a clever team to get all these things right, and I am still amazed over how LMS Engineering managed the whole situation just… impressively well. To make a long story short, our TTRS2 had a clear competitive edge towards the end of the season, I am sure of that.

Photo: Pål Henning Berg

Speaking again about the practice on Friday, everybody finished their respective one-lappers and everybody seemed to be very pleased with the #303 machine as well. Georg and Stefan had improved rapidly on these latest races, and it was great to see how their confidence and speed rose with the amount of laps they completed in the Audi.

While the evening-session on Friday was dry, I woke up to a dead wet track on Saturday morning. The forecast predicted dry conditions throughout the day though, meaning that only the qualifying session would be wet. Stefan started entered the track as our first driver, and being one of his first experiences with the car on a wet Nürburgring Nordschleife, he made it safely through in a steady manner. Georg then entered the car and put in a solid time of 10:22 on his second run – for the time being far ahead our competition. In front of the qualifying session Georg mentioned that he liked driving in the rain, and he definitely proved himself right with that lap.

I was given new rain tires, and immediately found that great, fine flow that you need in the rain. Although it’s quick in the dry, the TTRS2 really comes alive when it rains somehow – while being easy to drive. I completed my first lap in a calm manner on a 10:16, and it was time to push… A little too hard actually, as I somehow spun just before I entered the Nordschleife by, let’s be honest, an utterly silly mistake. I only turned around 180 degrees, but it was enough to kill the engine and bring the car to a complete stop. As I fired up the engine again, I knew that the lap was lost. During the spin the #302 car with Daniela Schmid passed me, and to me it emerged as a good training to try and catch her up again. Coming towards Adenau I nearly had contact, but as we passed the famous and quick “Lauda links”, her car spun around into a cloud of mud and dust alongside the wall on the left side of the track. It was however not too violent of a hit, and although a bit baffled, I radioed the incident and kept on driving in a safe manner. Over the line my timing board showed a 10:25. We were however p1 by a little under two tenths over the Schmersal TTRS, but I really hate that I I screwed up that lap. The pole time in the overall standings was a 9:58, and I am absolutely sure that a time quite close to that would have been within rach.. Maybe later some time 🙂

However, we were in a good position for the race, and Georg was all set for his second start of the season. He did very well, and fought hard with the Schmersal TTRS with former DTM driver Markus Östreich behind the wheel. After a few laps the race was however red flagged due to fog, while Georg was second. The race organizers put together a complete restart of the race at 14:00, and Georg started the race once again – now under completely dry conditions. Once again he fended off the competition well, and actually built up a lead on around 15 seconds to Møller Bil Motorsport TTRS and our sister car. I was to get into the car for the second stint, and I had the perfect starting point with Georg’s superb initial drive. As soon as I got into the TTRS2 things worked well, both mentally and mechanically speaking. The track was filled with code 60 zones, which is always a challenge with regards to obtaining a good flow, but I still had some momentum on my competition. Eight laps later I handed over the wheel to Stefan for the last couple of laps, while I was informed that our gap had increased by over two minutes to the rest of the field. Yep, that felt good.

Stefan didn’t put a single foot wrong, and carefully took the TTRS2 through the final stages of the race to grab the victory after 21 laps in total. Second, over a minute behind Stefan was finally the raeder Motorsport TTRS, with the Møller Bil Motorsport TTRS in third position. Actually the final few steps were subject to a fierce battle in the last laps, in which the Raeder based cars ended up in front of our #302 sister car. Regardless, this concluded a season that has been something special for us all, I think. Personally, if not the most successful one in terms of results for me, I am quite sure that it has been the most joyful season I’ve had so far in my racing career. The team has as always been super friendly, I’ve had two fantastic teammates in Georg and Stefan, and we’ve had the most entertaining track in the world to compete on. Yet, I think the most satisfactory part is the fact that we worked so hard with the setup of the car, and pretty much succeeded on all areas in the end. LMS Engineering is consisting of many, many incredibly competitive heads that simply refused to freeze any development until we were clearly the quickest car on track. To work with such people is any racing drivers dream, and I’ve had the chance to do that all year. For that I am really grateful, and I wish that the season had continued for a long time still.

Now it’s time to look forward again and check different possibilities for 2015. In the end I would also like to thank everybody else that has been involved in the 2014 season. That is flag marshals, race organizers, fans of our car and the series in general and more – thanks for a fantastic season!! See you all again next year! 🙂

– Cheers, Christian

VLN 9: this TTRS2 is the real deal

Photo: Gerd Umlauf

Yup, it was just crazy good this weekend – but more on that later. Knowing how much LMS Engineering had worked with the car before the last part of the season, it was a great shame to have the eighth round of the VLN Endurance championship scrapped due to fog on the race day. Moreover it led to a near two month absence from racing, rendering an exciting venue for  the ninth round of the championship. This time the weather was perfect, at least on Friday evening, with mild October sun. Georg Niederberger, Stefan Wieninger and I all did one lap each in the practice, just to get in touch with the car again and checking on how a few new modifications were working. Everybody were satisfied after the test, although personally I was struggling quite a lot to find that final and important bit of confidence out there. I visualized many, many laps that evening just to make sure that I was as well prepared as I could be, since I was to enter the track on qualifying tires for the first time ever on Saturday morning.

Like at VLN 8 the day started with the presence of fog – a lot of it actually.. At one point I was worried that this race would suffer the same issues as last time around. However, after an hour it slowly cleared up, and the common sound of roaring engines filled the Nürburgring Nordschleife once again. Stefan started the qualifying for us, in which he fought the cold tires for one complete lap. The air temp was hovering around the the five-degree mark, and the hard compound rubber tire was pretty much at its limits. With improved ambient temperatures Georg drove a great second lap – bringing us to the top of the sheets with a 8:59 on a highly traffic-packed lap. I was next, and for the first time LMS Engineering brought a pair of qualifying tires from Dunlop. I didn’t have too much of an idea of what to expect, but boy was the difference big to the race tire once I got onto the track. The TTRS came right into it’s window here, and although the car itself was developed for the much wider SP4T tires to begin with, the smaller SP3T Dunlop tires felt amazing straight away.

Photo: Gerd Umlauf

The first lap was used to try and get rid of that odd feeling from yesterday, which went kind of well. While trying to find a good flow and not pushing too hard, I had to try and find the limits of these tires with regards to the second and more important lap at the same time. Traffic wasn’t too bad, but I was really surprised when a 8:34 popped up on my display as I entered the second lap. It was already a lap record for the SP3T category by nearly two seconds, but I knew that there was a lot more in it. The second lap started off well, and I came through every sector with no more than usual traffic. At the finish line my dash showed a 8:27.79, which was pretty much indescribable. At no point beforehand of the day would I have believed that we would smash the previous lap record with around nine seconds, but now I was enjoying every second of it. What a car, what amazing tires, but more importantly – what a team!!!  LMS had done an incredible job setting it up, and finally it was very cool to have something back for all the time and resources that had been put into it throughout the season.

Photo: cropfactor.com // Thomas Rupp

The atmosphere and spirit in the garage afterwards was amazing, mildly spoken. As always however, focus was switched to the race pretty much straight away, and this time Georg would start in the #303 TTRS. The Raeder Motorsport TTRS was second, while Daniela had qualified the #302 sister car in third. Behind that was the Düchting Scirocco, alongside the factory entry from Subaru. Usually one of our fiercest competitors this season, the Møller Bil Motorsport TTRS, would usually be in the mix as well – but they were unfortunately not on the grid due to a technical defect leading to a crash on the Friday practice session. The damage was unrepairable, meaning that we were left without competition that we’ve really enjoyed this year. Georg was however ready for the task, and started off great with keeping his lead out of turn 1. Daniela Schmid did however advance to second position, as Raeder Motorsport fell back a few positions. The two LMS cars trailed each other for several laps with great pace, building up some distance to the competing SP3T cars behind. On the beginning of lap three Daniela passed Georg to take the lead, but over the next five laps Georg wouldn’t loose more than a little over ten seconds to the sister car. Considering that this was his first opening stint with the TTRS ever, he delivered a great performance.

Photo: Nico Werthenbach

Stefan was the next driver to get behind the wheel for us, setting a strong pace immediately. He steadily gained time on C.Tiger in the #302, and after a few laps he was right on his tail – pushing to get back into the lead. Three laps before the end of Stefans stint he went for the pass and succeeded. Following that he put in new personal bests one lap after the other, and when coming into the pits to change drivers with me he had a lead of nearly ten seconds – with a healthy distance down to the Raeder Motorsport TTRS. C.Tiger did however drive a great inlap, and combined with a quick pit stop from the LMS Engineering crew – the #302 came out of the pits right in front of me with Roland Botor behind the wheel. On cold tires he did however struggle a tiny bit around turn 1, meaning that I would be able to get a better exit and regain the lead. Further on I had the advantage of warm tires since I had one full lap on them, and used this as best as I could to build a good lead. Luckily for me it worked out well, and my only focus at the end was to get to the finish without any damage to the car. The end of the race became however more exciting that I would have liked it to be due to a minor technical issue with the car, but in the end it didn’t stop us from taking our second victory of the season after 26, hard fought laps! It was a superb feeling, knowing what an incredible job my teammates and the LMS crew had put up this weekend. Being a double victory, as Roland finished second, it could probably not have been better! 🙂

Photo: Lutz Rodriguez

Many, many thanks to everyone who contributed to this fantastic race weekend – I can’t wait for the next one to start already. It’s hard to believe that we will ever be able to top off this race, but we’ll see 😉 Looking forward to see you all soon!

– Chris

Mmm, may the season continue like this!

After hours and hours of working/analyzing, steps in the right direction, steps in the wrong direction, small improvements here and there – another VLN was about to go green last weekend. Previously in 2014 we had constantly been pursued by pure bad luck in different shapes and forms. Punctures, red flags at the worst possible time, competitors crashing us out in qualifying… You name it. It had all been things outside our control – leading to quite some frustration over time. Moreover our competition had done exceptionally well, leaving us no room for such misfortunes. Would things finally turn in favor of us this time?

Photo: Thomas Rupp

Our spirit was at least good ahead the usual practice session on Friday evening. Strengthening our line up this time along with Georg Niederberger, Stefan Wieninger and me, was 2012 LMS-regular Ulli Andree. He’d also been on the car earlier this year, though unfortunately while it was not at its peak point in terms of performance. Having made a lot of improvements since then, I was quite confident that he would get into a good rhythm very quickly – and thus deliver a solid performance on Saturday. First though, we were going to continue testing our experimental setup option, which had proven to be very promising at VLN 6. After three rounds of further testing on Friday it was clear that we had improved since last time, though not enough to take the chance to test it on a complete race. Ulli also had two laps in the car, and was immediately on the pace. Personally I felt quite good on Friday evening, having had a rather relaxed practice session.

Photo: vln-pix.de

Saturday morning started with a blast. I started in the #303 to do a check-lap, and reverting to the old setup seemed to be the correct decision. The car was slightly more easy driven, and since the track had many wet patches after a rainy night – it felt exceptionally good. I came around on a 9:19, second in the overall standings. Stefan then bettered our lap time with a 9:10 on a drying track, keeping our leading position in the SP3T class. Ulli then took the wheel and drove a very strong 8:48 right away – putting us well ahead of our competition. Georg Niederberger also completed his mandatory lap on a 9:05, though with a longer code-60 zone in it. Having had a look at it after qualifying, he was also on his way to a lap beneath 8:50 on used tires, proving that our line-up of drivers really was on it today.

Directly after Georg came in and I was about to take over, Daniela Schmid completed her final qualifying attempt on an 8:45 in the #302 sister car – putting it on a provisional pole ahead of us. I had a good feeling on the first part of my lap, though at Flügplatz I saw the first sign of raindrops on my windscreen, which steadily escalated throughout the lap. After only a couple of minutes I was forced to abort my lap due to heavy rain, and simply brought the car safely back into the pits. It meant no pole position for us, but Ulli’s qualifying lap had provided us with a first-row position in the race. A good starting point! Further down the field in SP3T we had Møller Bil Motorsport on third and Raeder Motorsport on fourth – both with their TTRS 2.0’s.

Photo: Gerd Umlauf

In terms of mental preparations I always like to have a lap with pure pushing before the race. It makes you more familiar with the car’s limits, and you release quite some adrenaline throughout such a lap. This time was different, and I had basically been driving safely through the track without feeling its limits at all. Although it might not sound very different, my own, mental approach changed quite drastically from the usual course in front of the race. First of all I used a lot of energy on getting heat into my tires early on in the warm up lap, to get a feel for how the rear axle was moving around with different inputs on the steering wheel. The further we came the more I got a good clue on how it was working, and as the lights were about to go green, I was pretty confident on my race strategy. Our team strategy was however such that I would start, then Stefan would do the second stint, Ulli the third, Georg the fourth and then I would jump into the TTRS again for the short final stint.

Photo: Thomas Rupp

I was actually not alert enough when the lights went green, as the #302 squeezed me into a line where I wasn’t able to get alongside him for the start. Clever, though I was confident that I would catch him later on. The Møller Bil Motorsport TTRS was however alongside me into T1, and as I tried to maneuver my car on the outside of the #302 I went slightly too deep out of the first corner. The Møller TTRS was also under pressure from the cars behind, and I came out of it all in second position. In turn 4 however, the #302 driver made a small error, and I could pass him on the inside line. The Møller TTRS followed me on the same line and also passed the #302, pushing me into turn five. On the next few corners however, I got a car length that I could build on, cool down and mind only myself the next kilometers. Coming to Schwedenkreuz, around 8 km into the lap, I felt quite clearly that I had the upper hand in terms of pace, as the Møller TTRS slowly faded away in my mirrors. Someone actually caught us passing into Aremberg on their GoPro:

The next few laps were good, and I worked myself through the first four laps in a steady pace. Some code 60 zones appeared here and there, but generally the track felt quite calm. Then, coming up to Hohe Acht on the fifth lap, seemingly only one single yellow flag was shown – just before a double yellow – which kind of came quickly on me. I stepped on my brakes as hard as I could, and I just about managed to brake down enough.. According to race regulations, every code 60-zone is to be warned about with two single yellow zones in front of it, and I only noticed one. Since the distance between the two marshal posts were so small, it became kind of critical. I kept on going, then coming to Flugplatz 1, another code 60 zone was shown. This time it was warned with two single yellow flag zones according to regulations, but there was no green flag shown after it. Were I to accelerate? Yes? No? To be on the safe side I decided to accelerate as a backmarker passed me – a drive through penalty would be unacceptable after all the misfortunes earlier this year. I slowly forgot about it all and got on with my rhythm again until I approached the Carrousel on lap 6. A single yellow was shown in front of it, and I slowed down slightly. The problem now was that if there was a double-yellow situation there, it would be shown on the inside of the Carrousel corner – which is in fact was impossible to see due to the HANS (supporting our necks in case of a crash) device limiting my head-movements. I had no idea if there was a double yellow there, and I still don’t know. I decided to go 60 though, to limit any form of chance of receiving a penalty. A backmarker passed me whilst in the zone, but I don’t know if it’s due to that he simply didn’t see the double yellow – or if he was overly pissed over the fact that I went 60 km/h in a single yellow part.. God knows. I actually experienced the “show-only-one-single-yellow-in-front-of-a-code60-error” again a lap later, and decided to take it very easy from then on and into my pit stop two laps later.

The one key word that i would use from the stint was “messy”, especially since I lost a bit track of my race-momentum after all the different events.

Photo: Wojtek-Photografie

Stefan did however jump into the car, feeling confident. Our five-cylinder TTRS is naturally slightly more thirsty than the four cylinder TTRS from Raeder and Møller Bil – and so we lost around ten seconds on Stefans outlap due to longer fuel time in the pits. The next lap he was right on pace again though, taking back five seconds on Møller Bil to retain a fifteen second lead. On lap three, rain hit the track again, though we were quite confident that it wouldn’t turn into a heavy rain fall. Møller Bil decided to pit for rain tires though, and a lap later it proved to be the correct choice. Stefan was left out on slicks in one of the heaviest rain showers I have seen in a long time, and although Møller Bil had pitted, they came around first to complete the next lap while Stefan limped to the pits on his slick tires. At this point, Møller Bil led with nearly two minutes on us. Then the #302 sister car was a few minutes behind us again, due to bad luck early on in the race. The Raeder TTRS had crashed along with the Düchting Scirocco GT24, and were thus out of the race.

Ulli took over the wheel of the TTRS, and cut quite a lot out of the lead of the leading, blue Møller TTRS. The track dried out pretty quickly on the next few laps however – and Møller Bil decided to pit for a fresh set of slick-tires. Ulli took the lead, though he was on rain tires – which is very hard to drive with on a near-dry track. Additionally, Møller Bil was lapping nearly a minute quicker on their slicks and were soon to pass Ulli. Teamboss Andreas Lautner kept him out though, assuring me that there was more rain coming. I had serious doubts over this, but apparently he could “smell it” from the air.. And sure enough – five minutes later rain poured down over the Nürburgring Nordschleife like never before. No doubt that Andy made the right choice there, as the Møller Bil car was simply floating around like a boat on its slick tires, while Ulli made it quickly through to the pits to change drivers with Georg. Later the decision of keeping rain tires on for Ulli proved to be worth over 10 minutes on the Møller Bil car, which now was out of contention for the lead. Our sister car was now second in class, though over five minutes behind us. In other words, we simply had to keep it on track. Georg delivered the stint of his life though, taking even more time out of our competitors and giving me the best base I’ve ever had for a final stint.

The track was again getting bone dry beneath my rain tires, but the black skies surrounding the track witnessed of another heavy rain shower to appear quite shortly. Because of this I went very easy on my first few laps, to make sure that I would have some trace left when the rain came around. We had enough distance to the teams behind us. Soon the rain came, and it came in hard – and at the exactly same time my window wiper malfunctioned competely. My window was filled with spray almost immediately, and I lost about all my sense of speed. Moreover, it was impossible to know if the track was filled with a lot of water or not, and everything I could see was a big, ugly water ripple – and the colors of the red and white curbs at times. When the rain was at its worst I just aimed for those, and came through – though very slowly. The final few ten minutes were just filled with aqua planning, and I barely went over 100 km/h at any point to make sure that we would reach the end.

A little later I came over the finish line though, and what a relief it was.. Our first victory in 2014!! Best thing was that some minutes later, Daniela passed the finish line in second place to secure the second double victory in SP3T in a row! A result of a lot of work, both from the administration, mechanics and drivers.. Finally! Moreover none of us had put a foot wrong, and especially the ultra-cool decision by Andy to stay out on rain tires midway during the race very much turned it all in favor of us. My teammates also did a gigantic job, and I am pretty confident that we would have won anyway with the speed we all showed today – even without the weather conditions changing as much as they did. However, I owe you all a huge thumbs up and thanks for your great work! It was a pleasure as always – let’s hope it continues for the remainder of the 2014 season!

Coming up next is a test with LMS Engineering at Mugello, Italy, and then we’re ready for the eighth round of the VLN Endruance Series the 13th of September. See you all then!

Vln 6 – another step in the right direction

Photo by Thomas Rupp // cropfactor.com

Hi everybody! Sorry for being quite late on this one, but it has been one hectic weekend to get through. Having sorted all my memories and impressions from last weekend, it is still cool to think through though. Ever since VLN 3, our all-season-low point with regards to (mostly) bad luck and some performance issues – LMS has continuously been improving the car, and consequentially I have reported “yet another performance improvement” on every single post-race report since then.. And yeah, you guessed right from the headline – we had yet another weekend in which we made some interesting discoveries along with some important steps performance-wise. And yes indeed, in fact it was nearly a perfect weekend… Nearly. But I’ll get back to that 🙂

Yet again we started with practice on Friday evening, though this time with a very different suspension setup than before. After experimenting a lot forth and back, we were quite happy at the end of the day. We did however decide to revert back to the original suspension, and to keep improving the experimental one at a later time. It’s a great prospect, and I am really excited to try it out in an improved form soon! Due to all the extensive testing, my teammates Georg and Stefan were to have a few additional laps on Saturday morning, to get that fine-feel for the car again. Our feeling was however great, and knowing that the original setup was proven to work sufficiently after the improvements made in the last races – we were quite confident with regards to our expectations to the Saturday-race.

Photo by Thomas Rupp // cropfactor.com

Saturday started off with a one-lap stint for me on the same set of tires that we drove on Friday night, to verify all the information that we had gathered with the experimental setup. Once I got into the car it became even clearer which areas we had to improve on the new setup, and which ones that were already improved. Exactly the answers that we wanted. I got through the lap with a code 60-zone and quite some traffic, before I gave the wheel to Stefan. He directly entered the sub-nine’s with an 8:58 – and put our car on a provisional pole. Not for long though, as both the Raeder TTRS and the Düchting Scirocco GT24 burst through on 8:46 and 8:50 respectively. Stefan’s next lap was filled with more yellow flags, and he was left without an improved lap time in the end. However, on the same conditions as our competition, he was already nearly at their pace despite some limited time in the TTRS2 this year. Very impressive! Georg was the next to step into the car, and he did a similarly great job. He was however more unlucky with the conditions, as the track was was now covered by several code-60 zones. He still put in two good laps, and just like Stefan, he was satisfied with the car as I had a brief chat with him after his drive. I was now to do another one-lapper on a fresh set of race tires, though we waited for the code 60 zones to disappear before I got in behind the wheel of the TTRS2.

Photo by Thomas Rupp // cropfactor.com

The start of the lap was quite crowded, and immediately I thought that I had lost a touch too much on the GP-track. However, coming through most of the Nordschleife – my feeling gradually became better as I caught one car after the other on very fortunate places. Coming out on the Döttinger Höhe, I knew instantly that this could be a pretty good lap – there was only one smaller Honda some meters ahead that I hoped to catch before the entrance to the GP-track. Coming under the Tiergarten-bridge, I closed right up on him – flashing him with my headlights to show that I was going to commit for a pass. He still didn’t blink to either side, but seemed hold to the left side of the track. I took my chances and went for a pass on the right hand side given the momentum I had, which I usually never do due to the high speeds at this point of the track. However, at the very last moment he swung onto the right side, and I just narrowly managed to brake sufficiently to not crash into him. Phuh, that was close! I broke down heavily and into the grass with my right side, maneuvered the TTRS over to the left, and then re-passed. Coming over the start/finish line the dash showed a 8:36.7, which truthfully felt quite disappointing right there and then. I guess the Honda simply wasn’t paying attention to his mirrors, and in the end it luckily only cost me some time. We were however on pole, as Raeder turned around on a 8:43 – I guess though with some more traffic than I had. Düchting was then third with an 8:47, and Daniela Schmid finished fourth with a similar 8:47 after some setup issues.

I was to start the race, with Stefan going second – and then Georg would finish the whole ballet. The start went well, and I came off well from the moment I stepped on the throttle pedal on the rolling start. However, the Düchting Scirocco had quite some straight-line speed, and challenged me on the outside for turn one. I came around well though, and noticed in my mirrors that Raeder fought back to grab second at turn two. However, I had a few car lengths on the both – and focused on building on that momentum. At Flügplatz the distance back to Raeder was around three seconds, and I was in a good mental place already. However, going down to Wehrseifen, there was a small touch of that something wasn’t quite right, while braking into the sharp corner. Hmm. I came through down to the Adenau bridge, and it felt quite alright again.. Continued up to Breidscheid, and there I had the same bad feeling again while braking. Turned my dashboard over to the tire-monitoring screen, and there it was. Both fronts had nearly half the pressure they should have under normal circumstances. Hell no.. Were we going to have another race drowned in bad luck? As I kept going around I tried to nurse the car as much as possible, but after “Pflanzgarten 2” the tires were through. The right front popped, and I slowed down significantly to avoid as much damage as possible. Most of our competition passed me as I limped away to the pits. LMS Engineering made a super-quick pit stop though, and we were soon underway again.. The downturn was that the Raeder car was 2 minutes and thirty seconds ahead. The consensus was however to never give up, and we had nearly a complete four hour race to complete before prizes were to be handed out. Much could still happen.

Photo by Thomas Rupp // cropfactor.com

I started with a fresh mind, though I soon came into a lot of traffic as I had to re-pass the whole group that I had started in front of 10 minutes earlier. I still got into a good flow, and put in a string of 8:40’s – being quite confident that we were catching the head of our competition. The rest of the laps also went well despite more code 60 zones, but the important thing was that we were still in the fight when Stefan took over the wheel. The distance to the leading Raeder TTRS was now around 1:30 minutes, and we were right on the tail of our #302 sister car – with the quick Roland Botor behind the wheel. Stefan managed to keep up with him though, and delivered a very solid stint whereas the distance to the leading Raeder TTRS was cut to around 50 seconds!

Photo by Thomas Rupp // cropfactor.com

Georg then took the wheel and went on to what proved to be the seven most intense laps I have experienced in a long time as a spectator. Six laps before the end, the Raeder car held a lead on around 15 seconds, with Georg and Daniela Schmid in the sister car slowly catching as the laps went by. Three laps before the end they caught up with the leading TTRS, and no less than an awesome battle for the lead unveiled itself. Daniela managed to swap places with Georg at the GP-track after a very opportunistic move, and then followed the hunt for the leading car – with Georg right at her heels. On the penultimate lap, she managed to pass the Raeder TTRS as well – and immediately built a gap of a few car lengths before the trio reached Döttinger Höhe for the penultimate time. Georg then passed Raeder for second, and rushed on to try to launch a final attack on our teammates in the sister car. Daniela kept cool though, and retained the lead to the finish line – with Georg finishing just a few car lengths behind on second place. Holy god, what a race!! Additionally, it was the first double victory for LMS Engineering since 2011, and a solid confirmation that all the work so far really has paid off.

Photo by Thomas Rupp // cropfactor.com

Photo by Thomas Rupp // cropfactor.com

We couldn’t be anything but really happy, especially thinking about that we had come back after the unfortunate puncture in the beginning of the race. I think we all had the race of our lives, and the team made a fantastic job to keep us in the fight with the fastest pit-stops of everybody in the SP3T category. A puncture hindered us from grabbing the top spot this time, but we’ll have plenty of chances later. Also congrats to our teammates in the #302 for their victory and the fight, and also to the guys in the Raeder car for a very entertaining battle towards the end. See you all at the 23rd of August! 🙂

 

Another close call..

After quite a long break from racing I was travelling down to Germany on Thursday eve, feeling more or less like a child that was about to open the present at Christmas. That is in fact how it feels every time, but I guess it is just easier to recognize how happy you are to be on your way to the Nürburgring Nordschleife when you have been away for some time.

Photo: Speed2Pic // https://www.facebook.com/pages/Speed2pic

Adding to this anxiousness was the fact that LMS Engineering recently had delivered a very solid second place with the #302 TTRS2 chassis at the 24 hours race – in the hands of Daniela Schmid, Roland Botor, Christoph Tiger and Constantin Kletzer. In other words, the latest adjustments by the team had paid major dividends in terms of reliability – though keeping the pace of the car at the same level as before. And although we had been the fastest car in every race that we had started so far this season in terms of lap times, our efforts were yet to pay off due to various events and pure bad luck on several occasions. Therefore, we had everything to play for – which in psychological terms was a great way to enter the weekend. Although with three of the Raeder TTRS’ present, as well as the Düchting Sciricco GT24 – we would have no choice but to push anyway.

As usual, we initiated the event with the common two-hour practice session on Friday evening, in which I did a few laps to check on the car. It worked like a charm, and since the guys at LMS had done a few tweaks to the suspension after last race, we had definitely made progress in terms of mechanical grip. In terms of confidence, it was the perfect start to the weekend. Georg also had a go in the car, and his impressions were all positive. The same was the case for our #302 sister car, and we were all seemingly set to go for the four hour race on the following day.

Saturday started with qualifying at 8:30, and I entered the track to have a go at a quick lap time right away – though a few double yellow zones prevented me from achieving that. Georg then did two further laps, but also he was interrupted by several new 60 zones, which later also was the case for Stefan on his mandatory lap. They both did well though, managing times that were very quick given the circumstances out there.

Photo: Peter Elbert

At the end I went out again to do a single lap – as LMS had checked that there were no more double yellow zones left out on track. Coming out there I had some issues getting my rear tires up to temperature, so the GP track and the first few parts of the Nordschleife was quite some work. Additionally I had some traffic, but at least no double yellows. Coming over the start/finish line, my dash showed a 8:38.9, which I was quite satisfied with. However,  knowing that there was so much more in it – I anticipated at least some of the other teams to beat my time, as I thought they were yet to post their fastest laps. I was however asked to pit, and so I did. Well out of the car, I was told that the other teams were finished as well – knowing that we were on pole for the fifth VLN race! It left me thinking a bit – what is actually possible with these cars on an optimal lap? And especially on a colder day later in the autumn, which is better for the turbo, with soft tires? That, should be cool.

The #302 sister car qualified third, right behind the #317 Race&event TTRS with former DTM driver Markus Oestreich behind the wheel. The usually-quick Raeder TTRS was in fourth, seemingly after hitting trouble, while the Düchting Scirocco was further down the order.

As a result of several code-60 rule infringements during qualifying, a great amount of penalties of various degree was handed out to a lot of cars. It is the first time that I have seen the officials take hand of speeders at this scale, and a lot of discussions with the penalized participants arose. In fact, the whole start was delayed by nearly two hours in order to finish all the discussions. In the meantime, light rain showeres repeatedly hit the track, and at half past one o’clock the track seemed to be fully wet.

Photo: ByJogi

At around 14:00 local time however, the start signal was given – and I put the pedal to the metal along with everybody else in the second starting group, on slicks.. on a rather wet track. I came first out of the first corner, establishing a fairly good rhythm on the GP-track while the others were fighting for positions behind me, before entering the Nordschleife. It was slippery though. Rear tires were too cool, maybe we were on the wrong compound? I came through Hatzenbach, one corner fully wet – then the next one fully dry, light drizzle on the windscreen. Coming to Flügplatz I realized that I had no idea on whether I would have great grip or just aquaplanning on the corner entry. Pjuh, corner entry fine, mid-corner fine, turn out fine – some pause from all the thinking while going straight for a few seconds – before going through the whole process in the next corner again. I got a gap of few seconds on my competitors until reaching Hohe Acht. On the formation lap I remembered this part to be among the most wet, and consequentially I entered this section in a very conservative manner. – Auch, too conservative on the first few corners, but I didn’t dare to push harder at Wippermann or into Brünchen. Soon Markus Oestreich and Daniela Schmid, as well as the Düchting Scirocco were all over me again, but especially Markus was coming quickly. Being an experienced driver from DTM in former years, it was evident that he was more comfortable than I was at this point. He kept hanging on to me until the Döttinger Höhe straight, but was unable to pass as we burst through the 3 km long straight. Daniela in the #302 and the Düchting Scirocco was catching us though, and as we arrived the start/finish line for the first time, we were a train of four cars in the SP3T class covering the first four positions.

Photo: Wojtek-Photographie

Photo: Speed2Pic

The GP-track was less wet than the Nordschleife, and I could push as on a normal dry lap. I saw quite quickly that I got a few meters on the cars behind me, and thereby felt pretty confident that I would be able to create a gap as soon as the conditions bettered. We did have constant drizzle on the windscreen though, but the rather hot air at Nürburgring this Saturday seemed to keep the track quite dry. Going out of the on the Nordschleife to start the second lap, we caught a full pile of backmarkers that were all fighting for positions. It soon became a big mess, and as one of the cars in front of me stepped on the brakes at a rather inconvenient place, the Düchting Scirocco GT24 that was on my tail had no chance on reacting fast enough. Results looked fatal at first, as the Scirocco had pushed some bodywork into my left rear tire, and thick blue smoke swerved out of the rear end of the TTRS2. Additionally, thick blue smoke filled my cockpit, and for a few seconds I kind of lost focus there. Beneath, you can partly see the smoke coming out – while passing the last car on the long trail that we caught up.. :

Photo: Motorsport-Fotos-L. Rodrigues

The next corners were a bit frightening, knowing that I had carbon touching/cutting through my tire to some extent, while pushing around many 200+ km/h corners.. Luckily we have a tire pressure monitoring system in the TTRS, and as we kept going around the track, pressures seemed to remain at a healthy level. While continuously checking on the tire, Markus was pushing hard behind me, leaving me no room for big mistakes. Up to Hohe Acht i did however slightly hit the outer curb on the corner entry, which was wet, and all of a sudden the rear slipped as if I was driving on soap for a blink of a second. Luckily the asphalt around the curb was dry, which made it possible to catch it, but damn that was close. Just check the angle of the steering wheel at the pic below:

Having slowly resumed back to my normal rhythm, I now had to had to reset my mind once again, and start from the bottom mentally speaking. I went on in a quite easy manner from Hohe Acht to Döttinger Höhe, though slowly pushing harder and harder, planning go full speed from the GP-track and onwards. The left rear was still releasing smoke, but not at the same rate as before. Was the Dunlop going to make the distance after all? Entering my third lap, the Düchting Scirocco had passed Markus and Daniela, and giving it a final push, I again secured myself some distance to the guys behind. Entering Hatzenbach I had a quick look in the mirror and saw that Markus had re-passed the Scirocco for 2nd, but he was now around 2 seconds behind – and it would be easier to increase that gap now as he wasn’t directly on my tail. Additionally, the track was dry, and I had seemingly no trail of backmarkers in front of me. Going on with a good feeling, I opened the gap with another few seconds that lap, and then another 8 on the fourth lap. At this point I didn’t see them in my mirrors anymore, and I could more or less continue to find my rhythm and feel for the track with the ever slight drizzle that was constantly barking at my windshield.

Photo: Speed2pic

At the fourth lap the part that was touching my left rear wheel finally fell off the car, and I didn’t have to focus a lot on tire pressures anymore. That helped a lot for the further four laps, although they were filled with a great amount of traffic and code-60 zones.

After my 8th lap I entered the pit-lane with a thirty second lead, switching drivers with Georg. He would be our last driver to enter the track this time, since the race was shortened due to the earlier delay. Track conditions got worse with the first thirty minutes of his stint, and it was evident that traffic interrupted Georg and the catching #302, as well as the Race&Event TTRS. Their lap times differed with up to 15 seconds the one or the other way every lap, and as 30 minutes remained of the race – it was clear that this would be a tough race to the finish. The #302 went into the pits one lap ahead of us for his last splash and dash, while Georg entered the pits around 15 minutes before the end. Question was, would the race&event TTRS complete the race without a stop, and go 10 laps? The answer was a clear sounding yes, as he rushed past the pits for his final and tenth lap. And sure enough, around nine minutes later the #317 TTRS came around, claiming their second victory of the season – while we finished a mere 20 seconds behind after our last pit stop. Although we were quite gutted, Georg had done great behind the wheel of the TTRS2- we were just not competitive enough at this very distance that we had to deal with this Saturday.

Though, with pole position, the fastest race lap and and having lead most of the race, we didn’t feel sorry on ourselves either. We have an awful lot of positives to look at, and given that the next race is a standard 4-hour one – we should be in better shape with respect to our pit stop rhythm. Should be a lot of fun!

Last and not least, thanks to LMS Engineering for their great work as always -as well to my teammates both in the #303 and the #302 for a very cool weekend. Also, congrats to the Race&event TTRS drivers and their crew for another strong win – but well get back at you asap 😉 Looking forward to see you all again at the beginning of August!