Successful season opening for Gtronix 360° Team mcchip-dkr

Written on 26 March 2018. Published on 26 March 2018.

Last weekend, the 64th Westfalenfahrt started as season opener for the VLN 2018. After a slightly chaotic vehicle pick-up on Saturday morning, the course was open for a successful race weekend for both of our vehicles. After a time delay of more than half an hour, due to fog banks on Saturday morning, the weather only showed its good side.

The Porsche Cayman, as well as our Renault R.S. 01 GT3 ran like a clockwork. Thanks to our mchanical team, who did a great job despite illnesses over the whole weekend (and in the weeks before). The qualifying on Saturday morning ran satisfactorily for both cars. The Renault, piloted by Schmidtmann and Hammel, secured overall place 20 in the starting grid. The Porsche took starting position 5 in the highly competitive V5 class.

A first duty of the Japanese youngster Ishizaki was still missing. The competition in the class, as well as the heavily GT3 frequented Nordschleife, denied his premiere in the Green Hell. Thus, the Cayman was led exclusively by Fukuda and Griesemann through the first race. The start of the race was also delayed by 30 minutes due to the morning fog. At the beginning Heiko Hammel steered the R.S. 01 GT3 while Georg Griesemann completed the first stint in the Cayman. Griesemann was quickly able to move up to position 2 in the V5 class, but was thrown back 200 seconds due to a controversial time penalty following an unclear flag delingquency (the process is still in the clear, but will not affect the overall ranking). The use of the Renault was smoother: The perfectly tuned suspension from KW Suspension, in a symbiosis with Yokohama's good tire material, made the Renault stick to the asphalt. A big thank you goes to Thomas Rechenberg from KW Suspensions. After 4 hours of thrills and one or the other thrilling maneuver it was done: The R.S. 01 GT3 crossed the finish line on 12th position without incident. A decent position for a private team, in the middle of the whole factory teams!

Due to the controversial time penalty, the Cayman could unfortunately only reach position 8 in class V5. Team boss Danny Kubasik is satisfied: "It was a great start to the season for our team. The performance of both cars fit and we could gather important experience with regard to the 24h race. "

Tags: VLN, Nürburgring,