Should, before the fifth round of the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft, someone have told Mike Jäger and Harald Hennes that they would finish on the podium – they would probably have smiled wearingly, as the Audi entered by S.Pace-Racing had to fight with overheating problems already in practice. “We simply lack performance when the temperatures get too high. We nevertheless need this performance if we wish to keep up with the competitors”, explained Jäger on the evening before the race.
However, the team around team manager Jochen Schruff seems to have found the right set-up during the night as, despite the big heat on race day, the engine temperature was not at all a question. The turbo front engine provided good services and with their seventh place after the qualifying the crew achieved a remarkable position in the middle field. And the leaders were however not too far away. “Unfortunately, we suffered a problem on the drift shaft in timed practice so that we could not set many fast lap times”, said Mike Jäger. He expressed his compliments to the whole team of S.Pace-Racing which made it possible at all for the Audi to start later in this hot race.
The term ‘heat’ was the word of the day. Whilst the first signs of thunderstorms came slowly up in the far west, the Nürburgring was really boiling. More than 30°C in the shadow and temperatures of over 50 degrees in the cockpits should provide a difficult job both for drivers and the cars. This should thus become a true endurance test for the Audis which had anyway some problems with engine temperatures.
And it stood the test! Up to lap 18, S.Pace-Racing with its two strong drivers was within reach of the leading cars of Raeder Motorsport. The gap to the Audi TTS was no more than one minute when a fuse failed and stopped the Audi. Jäger reacted immediately, informed the pit crew by radio about the position where he had stopped and asked to bring a new fuse. He rejoined the race 18 minutes later but had dropped back onto third position as a consequence. The Opel Astra entered by Kissling Motorsport and driven by Volker Strycek, which finally finished second, had meanwhile also moved away, although before it had not really been a rival.
“That was a pity as the performance of the Audi was really very good”, Mike Jäger was indeed quite disappointed about the short stop. But at latest since then, the ambition of the race driver has even increased. “Everybody should now have en eye on us”, was his sentence of the weekend.
At the very next round in almost two weeks time on 17th of July, he wishes to furnish proof that the Audi is also able to finish on top of the podium.
