After their class win at the second round of the VLN 2010, Jana Meiswinkel (Wilnsdorf/ Germany), Ernst Berg (Prüm/ Germany) and guest driver Ferdinand Baratella (Pulheim/ Germany) again made it on top of the podium of their class with their Ford Fiesta ST at the highlight of the season, the 6h ADAC Ruhrpokal-Rennen – and they thus celebrated the biggest success in the team history of ATM-Motorsport!
In particular considering the race results of the previous two 6 Hour Races, this success really was a relief: Whilst in 2008, they rolled the car and had to stop the race, they had last year a high speed accident in the section Schwedenkreuz in the very last lap. The Team ATM-Motorsport escaped any such lapse at this year’s highlight of the season!
In the timed practice session however, it became obvious that a class win by their own efforts would hardly be possible, as, with the time of 10:19.307 minutes, they finished into third grid position in the class of VLN Specials up to 1750 cc and it seemed impossible to match the top times. Ernst Berg was the start driver for the longest race of the year and, after some problems experienced by his competitors, was able to move up into second place in his class. When, after one and a half hours race time, the fastest competitor in his class had to stop the race due to a technical failure, they went into the lead already before the first change of drivers. “Generally, it was quite an unspectacular race for us for most of the time, I wanted to stay out of any fights which worked quite well. I suddenly saw that the Lauderbach-Fiesta had stopped beside the track and was able to go into the lead”, informs Berg.
Jana Meiswinkel then defended their lead in a superior way and she did not have to take any great risks to even increase their lead. “I tried to set lap times of 10:25 to 10:30 which worked quite well.“ said the 22 years old lady driver after her turn which was running according to plan. Final driver Baratella thus only had to keep the comfortable lead until the finish. This task, too, was brilliantly fulfilled by the 26 years old race driver “Well, my task was very easy indeed: We had such an incredible advance and I was able to complete my turn without any stress. This was my first VLN race and I must say, the action out on the track was very fair. It was really great fun!”
Team manager Werner Meiswinkel at the command post kept totally cool until the finish line – there had been too much trouble in the last race minutes previously – but then he went into ecstasies. “I am much more than happy, a fantastic success! Thanks to everybody, we are a super team, super drivers – just wonderful. We have covered 1050 kilometres today in practice and the race without encountering any problem at all. We are now looking forward to the rest of the season!”
This is also the answer of the team manager onto the question how things will go on in the current season as it was not clear for quite a time if they would participate in the remaining rounds. With this magic moment in their mind, the team ATM-Motorsport will now start the summer break of almost two months in order to attack again at the 42nd ACAC Barbarossapreis on 25th September.
