It was not only freezing cold in the morning of the first VLN race day of the 2012 season, but also quite foggy. The ‘Green Hell’ presented itself to the racing teams in its ‘best light’. The youngsters around team manager Chris Esser of the team PROsport Performance were expecting their race debut at the VLN Junior Challenge – Speed Date 2012 with excitement. Well prepared and fully motivated, the teams with drivers Sabine Christian, Isabelle Klein, Andreas Patzelt as well as Rainer Gelhaus, Alexander Kudrass and Tim Neuser now finally wanted to show what they were able to do.
Just for the start at 12 o’clock, it became colder, windy and finally it started to rain. The drivers of the VLN Junior Challenge nevertheless demonstrated that they dominate their 270 HP strong Seat race cars even under these adverse weather conditions. Despite this difficult challenge, they completed lap by lap at the ‘Ring’ in a safe and constant way. The experience gained during the last practice sessions and their analysis with Chris Esser and team seemed to have been very effective.
Team manager Chris Esser: „I do not expect top results form my girls and boys. If someone wishes to impress me, he or she can achieve this with a safe handling of the car and a reasonable driving strategy.”
The red flag came out at 14:45hrs and the race was stopped. The fog had become so intensive that Race Control decided to stop the race. As more than 160 minutes of the race distance had been completed when the flag was shown, full points will be awarded in the VLN classification. The SEAT with the girls finished tin 104th position overall and the SEAT with the boys in place 120 overall.
