As a young racing team with mainly rookies as race drivers you would rather not expect a too big success at your first races. The first results of the team are all the more surprisingly.
Long way to arrive at the VLN
The first experience with the car was collected at some trackdays as well as during two races of the RCN Rundstrecken-Challenge (circuit racing challenge) Nürburgring in order to get prepared for the participation in the VLN. The most important point in the preparation of the car was to get the problem of the oil separation, which is very common in this series of engines, under control. “It is not at all surprising that you don’t see a Cayman up to the 987Facelift in the V classes. We have now developed a system which at all permits to race this car with competition tyres and without spoiling the track with oil and damaging the engine. Today, we wish to express our special thanks for the kind approval granted by the VLN Technical Committee to implement this safety installation,” said team manager and team owner Armin Wandzik. “I hope that others have also noticed this and will help to create the classes V5 and V6 more variable in the future – for the benefit of the VLN series!”
Strategy and difficult conditions made the good result possible
There was a first big surprise when the car made its VLN debut on 30th July as Bela Molnar, who had been responsible for the set-up, finished the qualifying session on a mostly wet track right away into 4th position in class V6. “At the end of the session, some of the teams took the risk and decided to go out again for a fast lap on slick tyres. We, in contrast, did not want to take any risk with our car at our very first VLN qualifying, lost our 4th place as a consequence and dropped back into 7th place,” said the start driver. “We were however aware that the 4th grid position in our class would only have been possible under such difficult conditions. In dry conditions, the car is definitely not yet able to make such a pace.”
Weather conditions at the qualifying for the 7th VLN round on 27th August again were very difficult and the experienced VLN returnee Niko Nurminen was thus able to set fifth time in class V6 which meant a very remarkable 56th overall grid position. The extreme changes in the weather in the first part of the race made some quite unpopular tyre changes from rain tyres to slicks and vice-versa necessary. As the moment for a tyre change chosen by the team was almost perfect, Niko was even able to move up some positions and partly gained more than half a minute per lap compared to the class V6 competitors in front.
Rookie Oliver Bender tried to keep that position with the Optima Plus Cayman S under the permanently changing track conditions before he changed to Rene Steurer who rejoined the race on a meanwhile almost dry track with slick tyres. After a very constant pace over seven laps and in 8th class position, he then changed to final driver Anne Winness, another rookie who competed in her 2nd race only. She was pushing very hard and continuously set fast lap times despite the many yellow sections. As the team strategy worked very well towards the end of the race she made up places and the Optima Plus Racing Team was finally classified just behind the third in class V6.
However, the team had to still suffer a short shock when Anne informed that she had stopped in the gravel beside the leading Audi TT-RS and the Kissling Astra after she had gone off with the slick tyres in some rain showers at the section Aremberg. The team was deeply relieved when they got the message that the race had been stopped for safety reasons due to the dramatic change in the weather. So the team was finally classified fourth in class V6.
This success of the team is in particular due to the mechanics who had worked on the car until 5 o’clock in the night before the race day, as a result of which the car did not experience any technical failure during the race.
Optima Plus Racing feels totally happy in the VLN series with its brightly-coloured parrot and will use the remaining rounds of the championship to further develop the Cayman S in order to be even more competitive in the next season.
