After the excellent results scored at the last VLN rounds, the Team Vulka-Racing from Mayen/ Germany was highly motivated for the 6h Race at the Nürburgring. But things turned out to be quite different!
The timing sheets at the end of practice showed a time of 8:22,109 minutes. In the last lap of the session, Christopher Brück (Cologne) drove the Dodge Viper Coupé into position six on the grid, despite a lack of fuel. “I could have pushed faster” said the annoyed young driver from Cologne who has consistently been able to clearly demonstrate the excellent performance of the Dodge Viper Coupé in the last races. Position 7 – an excellent confirmation of the pace oft he Viper.
Together with Christian Kohlhaas (Andernach/ Germany) , Christian Brück and GT specialist Wolfgang Kaufmann (Molsberg/ Germany) the team started the highlight of the endurance racing championship season at the Nürburgring in order to compete against the impressive GT competitors of Audi, Porsche, Corvette and BMW. In the very first laps already, Christopher Brück informed the pit crew that he was struggling with gear shift problems. For this reason, he did no longer use the semi automatic gearshift with the rocker switches on the steering wheel but the traditional gearshift lever, which then however broke in the third lap. An early pit stop for repair became necessary and they lost more than 10 minutes. The Dodge Viper Competition Coupe GT3 dropped back a lot of places as a consequence. But the series of bad luck continued. Wolfgang Kaufmann suffered a tyre damage after a collision with another car and returned slowly back to the pits. The gearshift problems continued for Christian Kohlhaas. The problem could be solved by the pit crew at another pit stop but with the total of seven pit stops, the mechanics had to do really hard work that weekend. A broken cable had been the reason for the failure. After about three hours race time, the team had moved back into the top 50 and Christopher Brück continued in the Viper to fight his way further up. His efforts were then stopped at the section Schwalbenschanz where the Dodge Viper had a collision with a BMW Z4. Another tyre was damaged and the Dodge Viper Coupe again had to proceed slowly back to the pits. After 4 ½ hours race time, the team then decided to withdraw from the race after all the problems which they had experienced so far.
„It was just the opposite of our last race when everything was running perfectly. Today, we got one problem after the next. You wouldn’t experience such a series of back luck very often. Sad but true“ was the summary of Christian Kohlhaas regarding the 6h Race.
