“We wish to belong to the dominating teams in the Porsche Cup class”, informed Matthias Weiland already before the start of the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring season about the target of the Scuderia Offenbach and Weiland for the year 2010. The team started its approach to this target last weekend with regular drivers Andzej Dzikevic and Rodney Forbes at the first race. The second Cup Porsche of the team was driven by Matthias Weiland and Kai Riemer. “For me, this is a test here and we will then further see where to go”, explained Riemer who was looking forward very much to his participation in the 997 GT3 Cup before the race.
And indeed, he could enjoy the race as with autoweiland.de, he was part of the first winning team of the year. The two black and white racing sports cars completed their programme in a really surprising superior way. In a controlled timed practice in wet conditions, the two Porsches gained promising positions two and four within the Cup class. “There is no need to take any risks under these circumstances, the race is still long enough”, informed also Matthias’ father Harald Weiland.
And he should be right after all, as the 4h race on a dry track partly turned out to be all haywire. The two cars of the Scuderia Offenbach luckily managed not to get involved in any incident and could thus and with constantly fast lap times move up into the top 10 overall. In particular the duo Dzikevic/ Forbes had a very close fight about the lead with another competitor but decided the battle after almost three hours race time in favour of themselves. Everything looked as if they would finish with a class win and position three when the car into second place retired. “That is exactly what I use to say again and again. You must keep your fingers crossed that everything is running well over the whole four hours’ race distance”, Harald Weiland could well imagine the emotional situation of his unlucky competitors. But one man’s mishap is another man’s joy and thus Matthias Weiland and Kai Riemer came into second place without any need to fight.
Finally, autoweiland.de won with an advance of one lap ahead of the Cup Porsche into third place. In addition, the team with the two Porsche finally did not only finish in the same lap as the clearly more powerful winning car but they also finished into eighth and tenth places overall. That was not to be expected regarding the strong competition in class SP9 – the class with the cars homologated according the FIA GT3 Regulations. Many Audi R8 LMS, Porsche GT3 Cup S or other powerful cars lost against the fast Cup cars of Weiland.
The team around Harald and Matthias Weiland wishes to repeat their excellent result at the second round to take place on 10th April. Another double victory would clearly confirm the leading position of the team. But before this result can be achieved, again four hours racing time must be completed at the Nordschleife.
