Rank 23 for mcchip-dkr team at the 24h race Nürburgring 2021
The 49th edition of the 24h race on the Nürburgring was marked by extreme weather conditions and the longest interruption of the race in history! The mcchip-dkr team conquered the Green Hell with the KTM X-BOW GTX #115, driven by Heiko Hammel, Dieter Schmidtmann, Christoph Breuer and Tim Heinemann in an impressive 23rd place overall and 2nd place in the Cup-X class. The rookies Lucas Lange, Sascha Lott and Alex Meixner achieved an excellent 85th place overall in their first 24h race with the BMW E90 325i V4 #152.
From position 39 on the grid, the KTM X-BOW GTX #115 started the legendary 24h race. Starting driver Heiko Hammel made no mistakes in his double stint despite the most difficult weather conditions and already scratched a top 30 position. Tim Heinemann took over and after 4 hours of racing the KTM was already 27th overall on the time table. Contact with an opponent unfortunately led to a slight but unavoidable guardrail contact. Fortunately, only the power steering failed but Heinemann was able to match his fast times again after a vehicle reset. Further problem-free stints followed by Christoph Breuer and Dieter Schmidtmann until a defective air lift system made an extended pit stop necessary. A short time later, at 9:30 p.m., excessive fog led to the race interruption with the red flag.
Driver trio Lucas Lange, Sascha Lott and Alex Meixner in the BMW E90 325i, which took the unique 24h race from 111th place overall, made no mistakes until the interruption and were able to move up to 96th place.
The fog was persistent, so that the restart of the race could only take place at 12:00 noon, after an interruption of 14.5 hours. Heiko Hammel took over the tricky start-up phase again. Due to the cancellation of the time gaps and a longer overall time at the first pit stop after the restart, the KTM again lost important minutes, so that almost a complete lap was lost. The car was taken over by Christoph Breuer, who was only able to complete a test session on the KTM X-BOW GTX before the 24 hour race - he would be forgiven for a little spin. Tim Heinemann completed the final sprint and was able to set the fastest lap time with the KTM X-BOW GTX #115 with 8:38 minutes at the end of the race before he saw the chequered flag on a good 23rd place overall and 2nd in the class.
The rookies on the BMW E90 325i #152 from class V4 also made further progress. After a race distance of 9.5 hours, Lucas Lange crossed the finish line in 85th place overall and 3rd place in the class.
Despite the preparation, team manager Danny Kubasik draws a positive conclusion on the "Drive to Hell" project: “Before the 24h race, we only drove one NLS race and one track day on the GP circuit. Christoph and I were only able to test a few laps with the KTM in advance. In addition, there was a very strong field of participants at the start. Therefore, we can be very satisfied with 23rd place overall. Even though there were minor technical problems and we had a bit of bad luck with the pit stop before the race was interrupted. Otherwise we would certainly have competed for the class win in Cup-X. My fellow drivers and the entire team did a great job. The performance of the rookies in the BMW E90 325i is also commendable. To survive the first 24h race in such extreme weather conditions shows that the many test kilometers and the coaching with Heiko Hammel have well deserved. "
Over the next few months there will be numerous videos about the 24h race on the team's mcchip-dkr YouTube-Channel.
