„We could have finished on the podium in our class. That just can’t be true”, said an upset Hajo Müller after the ninth round of the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft. He was however not angry because of the performance of his team, of the other drivers in his team or because of the decision of Race control to stop the race before the scheduled race distance had elapsed. He was mad about the weather in the Eifel region which this time upset all their plans with the BMW M3. “Everything was running so perfectly, so why did it then have to hail so heavily that Race Control had no other option than to stop the race.”
It should take some time until Müller had calmed down and showed at least a little satisfaction with what they had achieved. Together with his two team mates Stefan Manheller and Carsten Welschar, he had anyway succeeded in catching up like hell on the completely wet track at the Nordschleife. After a timed practice with some downs, the Greenhell-BMW had to line up at the back in class V5. None of the drivers had a free lap to set a top lap time for a good position on the grid.
What then followed was a race with moments close to being off the track. The Nordschleife was even more capricious than otherwise. The racing line got partly dry whereas other parts on the track were flooded by water. All the sections on the right and left side remained wet all the time and the temperatures never rose up into double digits. These would have been the best conditions to stay at home in front of the fireplace and to relax, but not to compete in car races.
The three drivers nevertheless tried everything with the BMW M3 and moved up through the field. They closed the gap to the leading group bit by bit and with 10:42,749 minutes they achieved one of the fastest lap times in their class. The maximum they could achieve was position six due to the stopping of the race as mentioned above which had become necessary due to hailstones up to about 5 centimetres in diameter.
Hajo Müller will now turn his anger into positive energy in order to attack strongly again at the season final on 30 October. “I want to achieve a class win still this year”, said Müller and he is sure that they will succeed in doing so at the final.
