“Sun and rain take turns, sometimes in short and sometimes in long intervals”, this is the beginning of a well-known saying written in poetry books. This, however, turned out to be also the motto at this year’s 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen organised by the MSC Ruhr-Blitz which the drivers and teams had to experience in person on Saturday, 27th of August 2011, at the 7th round of the VLN series.
This race should turn out to become a pure tyre gambling. Everybody knows about the weather in the Eifel region and around the Nürburgring. The extreme conditions prevailing during the event nevertheless represented a true challenge also for the team of T+N Motorsport. Whilst in the practice on Friday morning, fast lap times could still be achieved, nobody could even think of setting top times in the race, unless you compared the pit stop times which dominated the race all time.
Our start driver and regular driver Christoph Brune took the start on rain tyres. The track, however, was about to get dry very soon and Christoph came back to the pits for a first change of tyres. All the four tyres were replaced by intermediates. But the team of T+N had not yet completed their job. Meanwhile, the Corvette driven by Amanda Hennessy and Robert Dubler also came to the pits to change tyres. Only one lap later, Christopher proceeded to a pit stop again to change back to rain tyres as some rain showers started again right after he had rejoined the circuit after his first change of tyres. The whole track was completely wet again. The powerful Corvette had to struggle with the same problems. Robert, the start driver, had to manage one complete lap on slicks in heavy rain.
Christoph and Robert proceeded to the total of 3 tyre changes before Christoph changed the steering wheel to Mike Juul and Robert to Amanda.
Mike left the pits on rain tyres to rejoin the race on a complete wet track. Concerning tyres, everything was running perfectly this time until the pit crew received the following radio message from Mike:
“I´ve got no power, can´t start the car again. I´m standing on Döttinger Höhe.”
Björn, Daniel, Christoph and Tom immediately headed to the car to see what the problem was whilst Didi and Matthias prepared the change of the generator which Nadine had obtained from Renault. As nobody knew exactly what the problem with ‘Wasa’ was, all possibilities were taken into consideration and prepared.
The emergency team managed to start ‘Wasa’ again and Mike proceeded to another complete lap before he returned to the pits. The team tried to rectify the fault as they still had problems in the electronic system. Shortly later, the problem was finally identified, there was some water in the electronic system. After the problem was solved and after the change of a sensor in the gearbox, we were finally able to rejoin the race again after a one and a half hour repair time.
The Corvette of Robert and Amanda also stopped at the pits during this period. They were struggling with misfirings. It should turn out at a later inspection that the crankshaft sensor had given its last signal to the control unit before it failed.
Meanwhile Tom continued the race with ‘Wasa’. He had decided to complete his stint on intermediates and he was able to set his laps without an accident, without a tyre change or any other problem so that the team had the possibility to relax for some moments.
Tom changed to Micke Larsen for the last laps whose task was to finish the race safely with ‘Wasa’.
The track was meanwhile dry so that Micke started on slicks. His stint, too, was running without any problems. And even though the race was stopped due to a heavy accident after sudden rainfalls and 8 minutes before the scheduled time had elapsed, Micke did a perfect job and finished the race safely and without any damage to ‘Wasa’. The whole team was very proud that they had finished the race which was characterized by so many accidents without any bigger problems on the car after it had been completely revised for this round.
Immediately after the race, the team of T+N Motorsport had begun to eliminate the last problems in the Clio. Amongst others the participation of ‘Hilde’ at the next VLN round is being prepared.
