2010 is the first season in which Mathol Racing is committed to an Aston Martin Vantage V8. Team manager Holle would never have dared to hope for such a superior class win right at its first year of participation in the 24 Hour Race at the Nürburgring. The other team cars, too, put up a really good fight and with the exception of one Honda Civic which had to retire due to an accident after a technical failure, all the crews fulfilled their goals previously set.
The whole team joined Wolfgang Weber, Uwe Nittel, Norbert Bermes and Rickard Nilsson in their joy when the chequered flag came out at the end of the 38th 24 Hour Race on Sunday at 3 p.m. “It was quite a relaxing race for us and we never took any risks”, explained Wolfgang Weber who created the key to the success with a brilliant start. He had passed many competitors even before the first corner. “That was really great fun. However, I took it a little easier afterwards.“ A tactic which was also followed by the other drivers. Finishing into 27th overall position, the Mathol-Aston was even the quickest Aston Martin in the whole field.
With the Aston Martin of Bratke competing in class GT4, Mathol Racing even had another iron in the fire. Although originally, the only goal for drivers Eberhard Baunach, Oliver Louisoder, Heiko Ostmann and Chris Bauer was to finish the race, a double success seemed temporarily to be possible for Mathol Racing. It was only after a small accident and a thus damaged tie rod that the second Astion Martin dropped back a little. The four drivers finally finished into place five and Jörg Bratke sent a big compliment to the pit crew: “Everybody has done an excellent job. The whole team was working absolutely perfectly during the 24 hours and also during the days preceding the race.”
Some work had occasionally also to be carried out on the Seat Leon Supercopa. Jörg Kittelmann, Dr. Jörg Wilhelm, Klaus-Dieter Müller and Manfred Volk did not all the time have luck on their side during their “Project 24 Hours”. Due to the efforts of the Mathol Racing team, together with the own team members of the Seat, the blue Seat was nevertheless able to every time continue and rejoin the race after some short repair stops. So the four drivers were finally more than happy with their eleventh position in class SP3T.
Happy about the running of the race were also Walter Nawotka, Jim Briody, Michael Prym and the only ladies driver in the Mathol crew, Charlotte Wikling. The quartet was really a ‘team of generations’ with an experience of all together 96 participations in 24 Hour Races worldwide. Their race was not without problems either, but place seven in class SP3 was their reward for some exhausting 24 hours and, by the way, they were finally the fastest Civic crew in their class.
Bad luck in contrast for Sebastian Schäfer, Doc Chris, Rüdiger Schicht and Michael Imholz. The four drivers showed a very good performance for 21 hours and 23 minutes before they had to retire. A wheel bolt broke, the Honda Civic lost a wheel and went off the track. After the Clerk of the Course, for unknown reasons, refused to recover the car (well, this is apparently the disadvantage if you are not a prominent works team), the crew tried to get to the car in order to recover it themselves. Unfortunately, this turned out to be absolutely impossible due to the big crowd of spectators moving around and so the team was not able to repeat the 100 percent quota of cars to take the chequered flag.
Not a reason to be sad for Matthias Holle: “I am really very happy with the performance of the whole team. I am of course particularly delighted with the class win of the Aston Martin but all the other cars have also fulfilled my expectations and with the quota of 20 percent of retirements in our team we are still above the average of 38 percent in this year’s marathon race around the clock.”
