The team dieselspeed was using a new engine for the second round of the 2011 VLN endurance racing championship. The highly motivated team around Günter Beckers used the free practice session on Friday to run the high-torque Diesel engine in and to put all the engineering parts in the BMW 335d GT/R to a final check again. The efforts taken in the perfect preparation turned out to be worthwhile as the team did not encounter any problem apart from a small repair on the front spoiler.
The timed practice on Saturday morning, too, was running without any incidents. „Bob Wollek“ (Cologne), Martin Gaus (Siegen/ Germany) and Günter Beckers (Viersen/ Germany) completed their obligatory laps and the team director himself set the fastest lap time in class VD3T with 9:37 minutes just before the end of the session. Günter Becker simply did not understand why Race Control nevertheless decided to classify the BMW into the third start group despite the fast qualifying time but just accepted the decision.
As expected, Martin Gaus had to struggle hard after the start not to be too much delayed in the traffic of the slower standard production cars around him. But he did a good job and applied the stronger performance of the dieselspeed BMW perfectly. In his second lap already, he achieved the fastest lap time with 9:34 minutes and a little later, he had already gained an advance of almost three minutes ahead of their competitors Hötzel/ Kutsch (BMW 330d) in the same class.
Their lead, however, did not last for lang. During an overtaking manoeuvre in the fifth lap, a competitor used a “somehow strange racing line” and crashed into the side of the BMW. Martin Gaus did not have any chance and had to return to the pits with a badly damaged car. The wheels were changed and the track was adjusted. The troubles, however, had not finished yet. The BMW came back to another unscheduled pit stop in the next lap already. The car had lost a tyre in the section Brünnchen and the team lost a lot of time as the car had to be driven very slowly to the pit area on the rim and they had to change the wheel again. The question then came up whether the race was already over for dieselspeed at this early stage?
Günter Becker then rejoined the race in the BMW, driven by frustration. He was pushing very hard and finished his stint of 8 laps without any problem and as scheduled but the other teams instead then got some problems. The class leading BMW 330d was absolutely pushed off in the “Hohenrain” chicane and Hötzl/ Kutsch had to stop the race. „Bob Wollek“, however, completed the last turn reliably and finished the race in the dieselspeed BMW as class winner.
Günter Becker finally was happy with the result: “Our class win was not easy to achieve. We had such a lot of bad luck at the beginning which was then experienced by our competitors. That’s racing.”
