The racing team of Matthes Motorsport, which is based at Meiningen-Dreißigacker, had not really been truly lucky during the season of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft which is now drawing to a close. The team around team manager Peter Matthes had to suffer many retirements which were mainly caused by back luck and by the incapacity of third parties. The fog seemed to have lifted now last weekend at the penultimate race of the season.
The weather at the Nürburgring during the 9th round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft probably gave rise to some pre-Christmas feelings: Temperatures only slightly above the freezing point, and sleet and hailstorm were regularly alternating with heavy rain showers. In addition, there was an icy storm all over the Eifel region. In short: The conditions to race successfully were not at all perfect. Matthes Motorsport, though, had a different view and started the wet-cold practice highly motivated. Race Control had declared the first lap to be an ‘information lap’ so that the times set were not taken into consideration for the classification. That was most helpful for the team Matthes because as Werner Schlehecker (Rösrath) crossed the Line for the first time, they stated a failure in the data transmission. The BMW 318is was immediately ordered to the pits and the mechanics started right away to find the problem. The following lap then completed by Schlehecker made him anything else than smile: Many yellow sectors slowed him down again and again and cost a lot of time. Michael „Mick“ Jestädt (Fulda) tried to make the best of the situation and finally had an almost free lap just before the end of practice. The time of 12:23 minutes brought them into fourth grid position in class V2.
Without any incident
The track was still wet at the start but the racing line got drier and drier after only a few laps. Mick Jestädt, who had taken the start on rain tyres, decided to come to the pits after lap five to change to slick tyres. At the same time, the BMW was refuelled so that Jestädt was able to complete a “super stint” of 16 laps. Right after his start, he caught the third placed car ahead of him and then started a successful attack onto the second placed.
In lap 17, Schlehecker took over the steering wheel in order to continue the good performance of Jestädt. The racing driver from Rösrath, too, had a perfect race up to lap 20 when it started to rain again and Schlehecker decided to continue on slicks in the rain for the remaining three laps. Although he did a brilliant job, he lost quite some time – time which his pursuer could make up and, in taking some risks, he was able to pass Schlehecker. The chequered flag came out after 23 racing laps and Matthes Motorsport crossed the Line into third place. By the way: With 10:14 minutes in his 13th lap, Michael Jestädt set fastest time in class V2!
