Michael Schrey and Henry Walkenhorst have stopped the dominating performances of Mathol Racing and scored their first victory of the current season in class SP10 with the BMW M3 GT4. Looking into the other results of the racing team from Münster/ Germany achieved at this race, it seems that they had to pay a high price for this result. Clutch problems in one car and two accidents with other cars will provide a great deal of work for the team director during the coming weeks.
„Michael and Henry have really done a great job“, said Michael Bonk after the race with a compliment to his two winning drivers. With an advance of 30 seconds, the driver duo won by a close margin ahead of the Aston Martin of the team Mathol Racing. Hereby, luck was this time on the side of Bonk motorsport. Mathol Racing had already passed Bonk motorsport on the track but little later, Race Control stopped the race due to a heavy accident. In such a case, the classification will be based on the results at the penultimate lap and Bonk motorsport was shown into first place. “You never get a victory as a gift”, was the team manager’s comment afterwards, “we have done everything right this time. You must also see that with the same scenario, we’ve had bad luck already twice and did not win.” His comment on the fact that all of the three VLN races so far this year had to be stopped before the scheduled race distance was completed: “Next time, the race should run over three hours only so that we will finally be able to complete the scheduled distance.”
This would however not have been a big help for Arvid Steinberg, Andreas Möntmann and Peter Bonk in the Schaeffler-BMW, either. “Apparently, the driver first of all lost his talent and then control over his car”, said Bonk who took the accident nevertheless calmly. The car was fortunately not too badly damaged.
For Wolf Silvester, Mario Merten and Emin Akata in the close-to-production BMW M3 the race was already finished before it actually had started. “The clutch failed unfortunately at the end of the qualifying”, said Michael Bonk who was not at all happy about that. His team tried very hard to change the clutch until the start of the race but the BMW could join the race only 20 minutes after it had started. “We then decided to test different set-ups and to gain more experience.”
Alexander Mies und Jens Moetefindt in the BMW 325i were particularly hard hit. The driver duo finally wanted to achieve their first win in class V4. Moetefindt started his stint from fourth position and was on his way to move up. He was at close distance to the class leaders when he changed the car to Alexander Mies, but after one lap, they suffered engine problems again. “We were able to repair the problem at the pits but then we had the accident.” Mies was overlapped by a BMW Z4 GT3 who moved back into the lane much too early and literally pushed Mies from the track. “The car is looking very badly”, said Michael Bonk who does not yet know whether the car can at all be repaired or if they will have to enter a new car. Alxeander Mies was fortunately not injured.
The result achieved by Axel Burghart and Guy Steward in class SP3 was more agreeable. With their almost standard BMW 320si, the two drivers are actually inferior in performance compared to their competitors. They nevertheless achieved sixth place in their class. “The two considered this race mainly as a preparation for the 24 Hour Race and they have really done a good job”, said Michael Bonk.
So there is a lot of work to perform for the racing team from Münter/ Germany until the 24h Race. All of the race cars must be ready in two weeks time as all the teams will travel to the Nürburgring on the weekend before the race. The next few days will show which cars Bonk motorsport will then bring to the start.
