Just three weeks before the ADAC Zurich 24 Hour Race at the Nürburgring, the 40th DMV 4 Hour Race represented a last, important possibility to determine the positions amongst the competitors. Manthey Racing took the opportunity and competed with four Porsche 911 GT3 of different models and configurations.
The Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 Cup-MR, still finishing second at the 24 Hour Qualification Race, was this time however entered with a different driver line-up. Porsche junior Sven Müller was replaced by another member of the youth squad from the manufacturer of Zuffenhausen, the Dane Michael Christensen who is competing with an Australian competition licence. Christoph Breuer and the only 18 years old Italian Matteo Cairoli, nonetheless, again formed part of the team in the green white Porsche. The partly new driver trio experienced an event at the Eifel race track which was characterised by ups and downs. Cairoli went off the track twice resulting in damages at the front part of the race car. They were furthermore affected by a stop-and-go-penalty applied by Race Control in the four hour race. All these incidents resulted in a final 17th overall position of the Porsche that was provisionally repaired with tape on the front left side. In their highly competitive SP7 class, they managed anyhow to finish in second place.
The red-white SP7 sister car from Manthey Racing, this time driven by Dieter Schmidtmann, Peter Scharmach, who is living in New Zealand, and Andreas Ziegler finished in 23rd overall position.
Whilst the race leaders completed 26 laps, Otto Klohs and Harald Schlotter had to stop their red-white Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R already after eleven laps. The reason was the activated warning display in the on-board diagnosis system. “We had anyhow planned to replace some basic components in preparation of the 24 Hours”, was the positive summary taken by Otto Klohs. The race driver from Ludwigshafen/ Germany will compete in the season highlight of endurance racing at the Nürburgring together with Harald Schlotter, Jens Richter and Robert Renauer.
The Wochenspiegel-Porsche in contrast, one of the total of only nine 911 GT3 RSR of the 2012 specification worldwide, was running over the whole distance. After the withdrawal of long-time regular driver Michael Jacobs from the team, the friends Georg Weiss, Oliver Kainz and Jochen Krumbach were this time supported by Richard Lietz from Austria. The experienced driver quartet started from an encouraging sixth grid position but Oliver Kainz came back to the pits after only two laps to change the rain tyres against slicks. Due to a speeding infringement in the pit lane, he then had to come back once again to take a stop-and-go-penalty. A second penalty was then applied, this time in form of a time penalty of 35 seconds. The Austro-Eifler team managed to make up a great part of their lost time during the four hour race duration. They completed the same number of laps as the overall winners but lost their sixth place to one of the Marc-VDS-BMW as a consequence of the above penalties. They were finally classified seventh.
Jochen Krumbach said on behalf of the whole team: “I am ok with the result. As final driver, I had a superb battle with one of the Marc-VDS-BMW. I managed to catch up 18 seconds in only one lap. And even though he was fighting back in the next lap, but this was my personal highlight today!”
