A splendid season 2009 in the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring lies behind the team Derscheid which is based at Much/Germany. The expectations of drivers, team members and fans at the start of the 2010 season last weekend were accordingly high. Finally, the race was marked by technical problems for the team Derscheid and it was only with greatest efforts that they achieved position two in the end.
The practice session already was not crowned with success for the team Derscheid: Regular driver Michael Flehmer (Overath/Germany) started his turn in practice at, as he said, the absolutely wrong moment and thus missed the chance to get a free lap and to set a fast lap time. Rain set in when Flehmer left the pit lane on rain tyres whereas all the drivers out on the circuit at that time had to continue with slick tyres and these ‘rolling obstacles’ of course slowed Flehmer down. Flehmer returned to the pits after only one lap over the Grand Prix Circuit and the Nordschleife and handed over the BMW 318is to his team mate and team manager Rolf Derscheid (Much/Germany) who was supposed to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Meanwhile it stopped raining and the racing line became dry so that Derscheid was able to complete an almost perfect lap, the team was temporary found into first start position. It was only a few minutes before the end of the practice session that the competitors started a counterattack and the driver duo Derscheid / Flehmer was relegated onto second place on the grid. Between practice and the race, the team was eagerly searching the fault for a big lack of engine power of which both drivers complained and saw their chances for a good race position go away.
Fighting up to the point of exhaustion
As usual, Flehmer was the start driver and completed the first two race laps of the 4h Race. Right when they crossed the start line, the class leader moved clearly away and was able to extend his lead lap by lap. A tyre damaged forced the class leader to come to the pits and Flehmer was able to move ahead and to build up a considerable advance. The joy about the lead, nevertheless, was not lasting very long: Flehmer was fighting like hell but struggled with the still weak performance of his engine. Still before Michael Flehmer came to the pits for a scheduled driver’s change, the team Derscheid was back into second place of class V2.
The pit stop was carried out by the team members in the usual quick and experienced way, they checked the liquid levels and refuelled the BMW to the brim. Meanwhile team manager Rolf Derscheid got into the race car and received last information from Flehmer about the track condition and about particularities on the circuit. A hard piece of work started for Derscheid and despite the lack of engine performance he closed up to the class leader lap by lap. Due to him pushing so hard in combination with the loss of engine power, though, the fuel consumption was much higher than expected so that he had to come to the pits for refuelling again just before the race end. So the chance to overtake the class leader in the very last lap had gone. The team Derscheid had to be satisfied with a second position in their class at the start of the 2010 season but which was internally evaluated like a victory considering the difficult conditions.
