Nicole Müllenmeister and her team had a very successful second race of the season at the 35th DMV 4-Hour race again. It was an exhausting and turbulent weekend, which was finally crowned with success.
Unfortunately, the additional fuel tank for the SEAT Leon Supercopa was supplied very late so that after Easter Nicki and her mechanics had to spend every evening till late in the night working on the car. The lady driver from Wermelskirchen/Germany thus could start her journey to the Nürburgring on Thursday night around midnight only.
The free practice on Friday already was very promising. Nicki was able to test her set-up and she was very happy with it: “The free practice was running very good. The set-up which we had chosen was okay, I only had to do little adjustments on the new seat which we had fitted into the car.”
Nicole was starting last Saturday in one of the strongest and most competitive classes with 23 starters. In total, more than 200 cars took the start to the 4-Hour race.
Initially, the start was all right for the fast lady race driver, but she got into the traffic of the first corner where she was put under pressure from all sides whereupon she backed off and hence lost 10 positions in total.
New tyres were fitted at the first pit stop. In the first lap after the stop she unfortunately suffered a damaged tyre and had to return slowly back to the pits and thus dropped back into ninth position in the class.
Another problem occurred at the next pit stop. Nicki arrived at the pits with a broken wheel bolt. It was not possible to repair the bolt quick enough and as this was the last scheduled pit stop of the race, the team decided for Nicole to continue the race with the damaged wheel bolt and with reduced speed.
Nicki followed the instructions and finished the race accordingly. She became fourth in class and 37th overall. In the special SEAT classification, she scored her second win and thus extended her lead in the current season. In addition, Nicki is currently classified third in the junior classification.
“Despite the bad luck with the tyre and with the wheel bolt, I am more than happy with the race weekend. My team has done a great job again and so we all together are very happy about the victory in the special classification and of course also about the good result in my class. With the big fuel tank, we are now more competitive than in the last race and our set-up was really good for the Nordschleife. We have to try little things now to improve the balance for the Grand Prix Circuit, too.”
The next race, the 52th ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup will take place on 24th April 2010.
