A thrilling 90 minutes on the Nordschleife incl. Nürburgring in “sprint mode” and 3 guest starters, which expanded the field to 38 vehicles, are done. Now you could ask whether our drivers are really cynics or whether the BMW drivers got together and all voted in favour of the Nürburgring package. I admit, I also voted for the Nordschleife. Now you could say: It’s my fault that this track was choosen. So be it, our drivers have mastered it.
As expected, the Quali was quite organised. Although many drivers tried to finish their formation lap as quickly as possible and thus have the opportunity to drive two faster laps with a fresh car, the field was quite organised in qualifying. With a route length of just under 26 kilometres, this is quite possible. Nevertheless, the 85 bends have their pitfalls.
Jan Schmid, Marco Saupe, one of the guest starters and Andreas Eismann secured the first 3 places in qualifying. Our high-flyer Riccardo Corazzari was unable to keep up and finished in 17th place, a good 8 seconds behind Jan Schmid in first place. No wonder! Jan set an incredible time of 8 minutes and 2 seconds on the Green Hell – nobody could really keep up. Andreas Hering finished ninth with 40kg successful weight and the fastest heavyweight was the current championship leader Maximilian Dehn with 5th place and 60kg additional weight, directly followed by Loris Brock with 50kg additional weight on board. The fastest outsider was probably Matthias Weber with his Aston Martin Vantage in P13. Yannick Pleiss was unable to compete himself but organised the best possible replacement: Rene Köller got into the car for him, an experienced Nordschleife driver who also enjoys sim racing.
There was action right from the start. Maximilian Dehn probably had the best start and immediately took the lead after starting from fifth place. Max Römer in P4 had the biggest starting mistake this time, not setting off at all at the start signal. The traffic behind was unable to take evasive action in time and simply crashed into the stationary BMW. This mishap cost some riders a lot of places and therefore a lot of repair time. Max and his colleagues from Team International racing blame the poor start on the ATU clutch – is that true?!?! 😉 Perhaps we should factor in a little more margin for the pit crew at this point.
The scramble for the top places continued in the very first round. Maximilian was gradually passed to the rear with his “blunt kitchen knife”, while the BMWs gradually pulled past him. But a Dehn is far from giving up! Behind the first group of the field, other top drivers such as Loris Brock and Matthias Weber lined up with the lone Aston, closely followed by an armada of 4 other VorteX drivers in the Porsche 911 GT3 and our Dutchmen with Bentley and Porsche.
Now that almost 2 laps are over, we can once again honour last year’s winner, who once again tried everything to avoid contact with other riders but unfortunately had no luck. He was involved in an accident with Riccardo Corazzari on the first lap. Somehow I’m sure he remained calm, even though he lost 19 places and suffered considerable damage. Corazzari was ruled out due to the accident.
The battle continued at the front. Although Jan was so much faster in qualifying than the rest of the field, he struggled to stay in front in the race. Eismann and, in particular, guest entrant Marco Saupe kept up with Schmid throughout the race and pushed each other from one fastest lap to the next.
Meanwhile, things became increasingly quiet in midfield. The drivers had plenty of time to make mistakes on the long lap and whoever makes the fewest mistakes is simply further ahead. This also resulted in pleasant respectful distances of 1-4 seconds. Nevertheless, we were able to watch some slipstream duels on the Döttinger Höhe and also some daring and clean overtaking manoeuvres, especially in the first 10 places of the field.
Our two other guest starters David Zirwes in the 2nd Aston and Thomas Grube in the BMW M4 were unfortunately involved in the starting accident and ended up in 28th and 21st place respectively, but I hope they still enjoyed the race.
The thriller for the podium places was fought out by the three familiar favourites, Jan Schmid, Marco Saupe and Maximilian Dehn. Maximilian was deprived of his right to have a say on second place. He simply couldn’t go any faster with the 60kg successful weight – nevertheless an outstanding performance! Jan in the M4 and Marco in the “old” BMW M6, on the other hand, were on a par in terms of times and put on a great race over the entire distance. It was also clearly visible that the M6 has its little problems on slower bends in comparison, but can catch up well in the flowing, fast sections and at top speed. Unfortunately for Marco – or fortunately for Jan – there was no opportunity to overtake him.
Third place went to Maximilian Dehn, who had apparently sharpened his blunt kitchen knife during the race, relegating Andreas Eismann to fourth place. Loris Brock brought the heaviest and at the same time fastest Porsche to a respectful 6th place. Daniel Erstling had the fastest Ferrari this time in P7 and our lone Aston Martin driver, Matthias Weber completed the top 5.
It was always interesting and exciting. After a route with just over 1 minute per lap, this time the lap times were a good 8 times longer, which once again makes this series unique in its sophistication of route selection and route voting.
Fancy for hot overtaking manoeuvres, slipstream duels, ATU clutches, underpaid pit crews and blunt kitchen knives? Well then, watch the stream!
See you next time at the casual “Mount Panorama”.
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