“We had all reasons to celebrate after the finish of today’s race. It was a tough battle and an extremely thrilling race – fantastic”, said a happy Harald Jacksties, Head of the UNIWHEELS Marketing Department, after they had finished their job at the fourth round of the endurance racing championship at the Nürburgring.
The aforementioned tough battle in class SP3 T, in which the InterRacing Team around Frank Lorenzo and Harald Jacksties also competed with their Seat Supercopa equipped with ATS GTR wheels, was representative for the whole race event last weekend. The overall victory achieved by Chris Mamerow in a Porsche GT3 R, too, was a balance on a knife’s edge. The gap between the first and the second place finally was only 0.240 seconds.
The Seat team with the two drivers Lorenzo and Jacksties, too, achieved a very successful second place in class SP 3T of race cars with 2 litres turbo engine although they had quite a bad start and would not have expected to still score such a good result. Both practice and the start of the race turned out to be anything but promising for the reliable and quick duo. “We had some bad luck in practice already. Although position three in the class and second in the Seat classification was all right, this result did not really reflect the performance of our Seat Leon”, informed Harald Jacksties just before the start with a little contriteness. The reason was that there was some oil on the track which spoiled the fast qualifying lap of the Seat with start number 330.
“Our slogan at the start was to go full attack – all or nothing was our motto”, revealed the fast drivers. Very soon after the start, though, they experienced bad luck again in the Hatzenbach section. “I had a good speed in the top group but due to the traffic on the track I couldn’t see the oil on the track at the beginning of the Hatzenbach section”, informed Frank Lorenzo. So, he couldn’t avoid spinning and the car stopped just in front of the guardrail, fortunately without any damage on the Seat Leon. Lorenzo, however, had to let all the cars in his group pull away before he could rejoin the race. Unfortunately, the following fight to move up did not last very long.
It was only in the next lap that the engine bonnet of the Seat Leon jumped up which forced him to proceed to an unscheduled pit stop. “After this disaster, our slogan was more than ever: all or nothing”, said Harald Jacksties who took over the steering wheel of the more than 300 HP strong front wheel driven race car fitted with ATS wheels eight laps later. “After this series of bad luck at the beginning, everything was then running perfectly”, informed Jacksties who lives in Switzerland and he adds: “I gave absolutely everything throughout my whole turn. The car was running perfectly and we succeeded well in moving up.”
Although the last third of the race around the demanding Nürburgring Nordschleife was flooded with fog and it started to rain, Frank Lorenzo continued to catch up resolutely and professionally which finally resulted in an excellent second place in class SP3 T. At the same time, Lorenzo and Jacksties achieved the title as fastest Seat Leon in the field. And to top this all, Frank Lorenzo and Harald Jacksties went into the lead of the classification in the Seat Langstrecken Challenge.
The Seat team was however not the only ATS customer team which had all reason to celebrate a big party. It was just in this very competitive class SP3 T in which participated also Jacksties and Lorenzo that the win went to a race car equipped with the ATS competition wheels. Throughout the whole race, luck was on the side of the team Deegener/ Wohlfahrt/ Breuer. The Audi team which is known to be very quick did not make any mistake and made it well deservedly to the top of the podium.
The success for the ATS motor sport representatives was completed with the result in class SP2 T in which not only the winning team of Schirra-Motoring was relying on the motor sport competence of ATS.
Next round of the endurance racing championship at the Nürburgring: 3rd July 2010.
