With a class win at the third round, PROsport Ferformance followed up their continued success in the current season of the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring. After a spectacular race and the risk the team took in their race strategy followed up in the rain, they succeeded in scoring another unexpected, but all the more enjoyable win in class SP 3T.
“Regarding the current competition in class SP3T, this victory was as unexpected as enjoyable. Our A3 is clearly inferior in performance compared to our direct competitors. As we are a small private team, we cannot afford to undertake the efforts in the technical development of our 2 litres turbo race car to achieve lap times of 08:50 minutes and below, we thus have to adapt as far as possible the external circumstances accordingly”, said team manager Christoph Esser who was quite exhausted but also happy after the race. “There was definitely quite a high risk involved in our decision not to change tyres like all of the other teams when it started to rain, but at this moment, we had Mike Jäger in the car, a very experienced driver who is used to master changing track conditions very well. I was aware of that and just relied on him”, adds Esser.
After this decision, the AUDI moved up into class position one early in the race. In his turn, start driver Kurt Thiim achieved a lap time of 9:05.358 minutes in the second lap which is the fastest time achieved so far in a race of the current season. Jäger, Bölck as well as Thiim again in the final stint managed to defend their lead successfully against their rivals who were going very strong towards the race end. Their success was completed by a brilliant fourth place of the PROsport Seat, this time driven by Stefan Michels, Carsten Struwe anjd Christian Bollrath.
“After the class win at the second race, the expectations regarding the performance of our Porsche Cayman in class V6 were quite high. Our plan was to attack again with a very balanced drivers’ crew (Thomas Koll / Christian Schmitz / Kurt Thiim) and a perfectly prepared car. At first, we were quite shocked by the early retirement after the heavy accident in the section Kesselchen. But when we were informed that Thomas did not suffer any serious consequences, we gritted our teeth and said to ourselves ‘now more than ever!’ The success in class SP3T helped us in getting over this incident”, informed Esser regarding the comforting end.
