At the first round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring, the 56th Westfalenfahrt over 4 hours racing time at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the WGB Racingteam was faced with several new situations at the same time. On the one hand, this was the first race participation for the newly prepared BMW 325i E92 Coupe and on the other hand it was the first race participation for Martin Gaus.
After some smaller engine problems in practice and the resulting poor 12th position on the starting grid in the series production car class up to 2.5 litres capacity, start driver Daniel Sorg managed to overtake some cars in the first two laps already and moved up into 8th class position. He was however not able to further catch up as he had to leave the racing line several times due to the leading cars lapping him. So the tyres unintentionally picked up the debris and dirt beside the racing line which resulted in a rather bad handling of the car. So the team had to rearrange and bring forward the scheduled pit stop with the driver’s change to Martin Gaus in order to send him back onto the track with fresher tyres.
After the hectic moments just after the start, the race then continued a little calmer so that Martin Gaus felt quite comfortable and set correspondingly good lap times. As the contact to the leading group was lost due to the problems at the beginning, the team decided to proceed to additional pit stops and to use the race as a test to further work on the suspension setup which had been delayed due to the frequent rainy test sessions in the preparation of the season.
Benjamin Sorg then took over the steering wheel and he succeeded in setting some quick lap times on the track which became clear and clearer due to retirements so that their fastest time fell below 10:20 minutes. In catching up in the final stage of the race, the WGB Racingteam improved up to 7th position and thus had a reasonable result. They will now continue to work on the suspension and the greatly stressed brakes so that a better result can possibly be achieved at the DMV 4 Hour Race on 18th of April.
