The 34th DMV 4 Hour Race, the second round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft 2009, was marked by extremely difficult weather conditions. The Wochenspiegel Team Manthey (WTM-Racing) made it to the finish in their Wochenspiegel Porsche without any damage, but they managed to achieve twelfth overall position only and place four in class SP7.
Something already went wrong in practice for the team made up of drivers Georg Weiss, Michael Jacobs and Martin Ragginger. Although the continuous rain in the Eifel stopped on Saturday morning, the track was still wet at the beginning of practice. The session started late due to some wafts of mist. Weiss and Jacob completed their obligatory laps before Ragginger was supposed to set a fast lap when the conditions had improved. This plan was however spoiled as the chequered flag for the session came out. Weiss: “We assumed that the session had started at 9 o’clock and were not aware that the start was given some minutes earlier. Our mistake.” Their lap time so resulted in 16th position on the grid only. The team of WTM-Racing nevertheless was optimistic before the start. Weiss: “The grid position should finally not be that decisive.”
It was in the first turn already, when they suffered their first setback. Start driver Jacobs spun after a slight collision and lost many places. He then tried to make his way back again through the field and decided to come to an early pit stop when rain set in during the third lap. Jacobs informed the team by radio and was hence quite surprised when nobody was prepared for his arrival in front of the Manthey pits. “For some reason, they did not get my message.” After the car was refuelled and the tyres were changed, the Porsche rejoined the race with a big delay. Martin Ragginger continued as second driver in the Wochenspiegel-Porsche. The Austrian race driver made it back into the top ten but then had to proceed to another pit stop to change to third driver Georg Weiss and they finally finished twelfth. Weiss: “We have again proved our reliability but we didn’t manage to achieve a top result.”
Georg Weiss: “I couldn’t do a lot more in my short final turn. I concentrated onto driving the car safe to the finish. The most positive point in this race was that the Wochenspiegel-Porsche did not suffer any damage at all under these chaotic conditions.”
Michael Jacobs: “We lost a lot of time due to the missed pit stop. I felt well in the Porsche also in the rain but we didn’t succeed in finishing into a top position.”
Martin Ragginger: “That was a tough day today, as I was driving two cars. The Wochenspiegel-Porsche was running perfectly. It was great fun but the result was not as good as we had wished for.”
