Interview with vln-fanpage.de (german)

It didn’t look that good for us on Saturday morning. Already on Friday we found out that we do have a problem with our rain tires when its under 15 degrees celsius. The car is just snapping on the rear end, caused by the tires loosing the grip suddenly and leaves us with massive oversteer in fast corners.

So we were prepared to work on it in the qualifying session. But than when Romain Dumas was on his first timed lap, at Wehrseifen he was just rolling out with a problem. At the end we found out that there was something wrong with a shaft between the differential and Gearbox.

So no time for us and starting from the rear in the first group.

To make it short, our tire problem was still there and we lost more than 2 minutes in the first half of the race.

When I jumped in the car, we tried a different set of tires and also modified the car. This was supposed to give us a better balance.

At the beginning of my stint, I was able to hold the pace while I was fighting with a Porsche Cup car. Later I found out that it was Christopher Mies. He did a great job and was probably happy to play with me and the green and yellow Porsche  😉 . But there I could see again how dramatic our problem was. He could take a speed into the fast curves, I was dreaming about!

But my time was coming, because with slightly drying condition the rain tires and our modifications started to work great and I was able to catch up to the front by nearly 10-15 sec a lap. That put me into P2.

Near the end, I had to come in for a splash and dash and a new set of rain tires. After that we actually lost our position to Audi that by than was driving 10 seconds faster than me.

Still we managed to end up P3 coming from the back of the field!

I think we learned a lot this rainy weekend and we know, that we have to work closer with Michelin to give us the tires we need. Temperatures at the end of May in the night won’t be much higher and to win the 24h again we need to solve that problem.

Overall I believe that with the “Balance of Performance” the GT3 cars are in a slightly better situation than us for the moment…..apparently.

More work and preparation has to be done….! 😉

Marcel

…a rainy cold day.

With 7 degree celsius, we had a hard time to get our tires to work. The Grip level was below drivable. Every time you tried to push out of the corners the Traction control (TC) started to work and even on the straight in 5th gear it always kicked in. On a Grand Prix track its better. First, you don’t have different asphalts and a track that has a lot of bumps, jumps etc. and second the safety is much higher. Even if you push to the limit and spin you mostly end up in a run off area or a grabble bed. On the Nordschleife that means barrier or wall! No good.

This kind of weather conditions you usually don’t find anywhere else than on our Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Tomorrow I hope that at least the temperature is higher, so I can get more feedback from the tires. The weather, lets see.

Hi,

I already arrived yesterday afternoon at the Nürburgring. Sunny and nice. But today it seems to rain the whole day.

I heard it should be better tomorrow. Let’s see.

Still sitting in the Hotel am Tiergarten and surf a bit the net. I heard that Audi was testing the last 3 days on the Nordschleife. I guess they still looking for the right Setup.

To be honest, its only 5 weeks to go before the 24h and slowly I get more and more excited about it. For me it is such an important thing. If we could win it again, I would be the only one who won it 5 times times and with Timo Bernhard together 4times in a row.

But there are the Audis the other Porsches and many others that don’t want to see us winning again…

But there are 24h to go…

But we can do mistakes…

But we don’t know if our car is fast enough because of the new “Balance of Performance”…

Too many “buts” so I guess we have to stay focused, push like no tomorrow and not dreaming too much. ;-))

…otherwise we have to try again and again and again. That’s in hour blood, right?

see ya

I thought you might like this one.

It’s was at the end of the final day in Fuji and it seems to be a typical japanese thing to do after a successful Event…;-)

[kaltura-widget wid=”748x4y3xig” width=”295″ height=”262″ addpermission=”3″ editpermission=”3″ /]

Hi,
what a first race!!!
Let’s start at the qualifying. I went out first on a used set. I told you yesterday that we solved the ABS problem over night. Yes we did but now the system was regulating all the time. That felt like braking on ice. I guess most of you know what I mean… 😉 my braking was double the length.

We changed the Black box and than it was fine.
To make it short, my second Lap on a new set of Michelin was good enough to be on pole…. At least until 20 min before the end. Than of course at the end with less traffic, times improved and Timo was able to drive a 8,26, 6th position.

Timo than started because he won’t do more races before the 24h. So like this he had more driving time. I will drive all races, so it’s cool for me.
After the first lap he came back 2nd.

My stint was pretty good. The first laps I had a lot of yellows. Adenauer Forst, Metzgersfeld and some more. The Lambo must have just started to burn like crazy when I passed. It looked pretty bad and I guess the car is gone?!
Today we had a lot of beginners, I had to incidents that ended up close in the wall if I wouldn’t reacted fast enough 😉

It’s anyway much harder now to pass. With less power and loosing more than 25 km/h on the straight we have to risk more than before.

With a lot of other cars having reliability problems and accidents, we could bring home our first victory this year.

YES, WE DID IT AGAIN!!! ;-))))

Can’t wait for VLN2!!!

Interview with vln-fanpage.de (german)

Hi everybody,
today we didn’t really drive that much. Timo had two laps out of the pits and than we had to bring the car back to the workshop. We had a problem with our ABS.
Luckywise our guys found the problem and for tomorrow everything should be good.

Since I was not driving at all, I took the chance and went with some friends to the Brünnchen and Pflanzgarten corner to watch our Porsche and the Audi.

It’s always good to see what our competitors are doing ;-).