For many laps during the 6h Race, the highlight of the endurance racing championship season at the Nürburgring (VLN), the team Derscheid was close to winning class V2. The team finally had to be satisfied with position two as the victory was spoiled by some bagatelles.
Already before the start, everyone within the Team Derscheid was aware that a hard and difficult race over six hours was ahead of them. In particular their team mates of the 24h Race would be a true challenge for the Team Derscheid, which is very much used to celebrate victories, to gain the winner’s cup. This became obvious in practice already even though the position on the grid at a long-distance race is more a question of prestige rather than a question of winning. Team manager Rolf Derscheid was the first of the team to start practice and set the team’s fastest time in his second lap already. The lap time of 10:23 minutes was anything else than bad but still not fast enough to be on the first row of the grid in class V2. Michael Flehmer (Heiligenhaus/ Germany) who completed three further practice laps was not able to beat this time and the team had to start the race from third grid position in their class, which they were not really unhappy with.
The strategy of start driver Flehmer was based on the fact that a 6h Race is quite a long race and will not be decided in the very first corner. In the traffic of the first laps, he was at first able to follow closely behind the second placed car and put a lot of pressure on the driver. When the race got less close and the first cars in class V2 were about to be lapped, Flehmer was no more able to push so hard. His pace was slowed down again and again as he had to pass groups of cars to be lapped and as he did not want to be involved in any dangerous overtaking manoeuvres, he was hence dropping back. In lap 12, Flehmer had to come to the pits for a change of drivers to his team manager and team mate Rold Derscheid. The mechanics refuelled the car, checked the fluid levels and cleaned the windscreen. The team refrained from a change of tyres as they knew from experience that they could always complete 2 stints with one set of front tyres.
At first, Rolf Derscheid was able to keep the pace of his competitors with the used tyres but lost contact after a while. Reason: The performance of the tyres became so bad when he had completed about half of his stint that his lap times were dramatically slow. The experienced race driver Derscheid tried to make the best of the situation for another ten laps and he was racing with a knife between his teeth. The BMW came back to a scheduled pit stop after lap 23 when the car was not only refuelled but the tyres were changed as well before Michael Flehmer rejoined the race. Flehmer was attacking heavily for seven laps but he was not really able to close up to the class leader. Whilst the latter had a clear line, Flehmer again had to make his way through the field in order to at least keep some kind of a chance to win the class. In lap 30, the fuel gauge indicated that the car became short of fuel – the team had to proceed to another pit stop and the car was refuelled to complete another four laps only. The reason for the high fuel consumption was the filler cap which was not correctly locked. So the car lost exactly as much fuel as would have been necessary to finish the race without this additional refuel stop.
After six hours race duration, the team finished into second place in class V2 and in position 82 overall of the 200 starters.
The next round of the endurance racing championship Nürburgring (VLN) with a race duration of four hours will take place on 25th September 2010.
