The team managers of Dörr Motorsport, Rainer Dörr and Jörg Ullmann, certainly had expected a totally different outcome of the practice session at the 41st ADAC Barbarossapreis: After some technical problems, the team had to take the start behind the first starting group instead of achieving a grid position nearby the top ten overall. Finally, this situation turned out to be lucky for the crew from the state of Hesse!
The two regular drivers Rudi Adams (Ahütte) and Stefan Aust (Münster) were supported by Wolf Silvester (Nürnberg) at this eighth round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft, as Luca Ludwig who normally completes the team as third driver competed in a GT race that same weekend. Rudi Adams started the practice at 08:30 a.m. in the BMW Z4 Coupé entered by Dörr Motorsport. In his first lap out of two, he was slowed down a little by some oil on the track in the area “Hohe Acht’”, whereas in his second lap he could react accordingly as he now was aware of the tricky section. A brilliant lap time of 9:41 minutes resulted in position 18 in the overall classification and first in class SP6. Although Stefan Aust was not able to improve the result for the team, he again managed to reduce his own lap time considerably in his two practice laps. Wolf Silvester finally had to stop after three quarters of his first lap when two bolts of the suspension unit broke and the BMW had to stop on three wheels beside the track.
A moment of shock due to lack of fuel
After the Coupé had been brought back to the pits, the mechanics under the management of Jörg Ullmann immediately started to fix the car. The repair, however, took much longer than expected and just before the last bolt was tightened, the pit exit was closed by Race Control and the team could not take up its position on the starting grid. There were two options: one was to follow the starting group in the formation lap and the other was to start from the pit lane. Rainer Dörr and Jörg Ullmann decided to take the second option so that start driver Rudi Adams started the race from the pit lane. Everything was running perfectly until lap nine: Adams started an attack and gained place by place – he was then slowed down by misfirings due to a lack of fuel. He was really very lucky to get to the pits with the engine switched off and to hand over the steering wheel to Stefan Aust.
According to his own words, Aust had his “best race ever”. Although he could not further improve his lap time, he was able to maintain the position achieved by Adams and further enlarge the gap to the competitors behind. Aust completed his stint of nine laps without any problems to the utmost satisfaction of Dörr and Ullmann. Wolf Silvester who then rejoined the race in the Coupé had to get used to the race car at first but managed it perfectly after a short while. He was straightaway able to set the lap times of Aust and thus confirm the perfect performance of his team mates. After four hours race distance, the competition finished for Dörr Motorsport with a win in class SP6 and tenth position overall out of the almost 190 starters.
“It is a pity that we lost a wheel and we have to find out the reason. However, we had been very lucky that the car rolled to a halt without touching the guardrails”, said team manager Rainer Dörr. “We were pushing our luck at the start when we sent Adams into the race with considerably less fuel. This time, fortune favoured the bold: Our fuel calculation just managed to work – the car would not have been able to cover ten more metres. But as the car was very light at the start, Rudi Adams was immediately able to attack.”
