At the eighth round of the VLN endurance racing championship, the 44th ADAC Barbarossapreis, David Schiwietz, Heribert Steiner and Victor Smolski were able to follow up their previous successes. Whilst the liquid gas powered BMW had to retire with a broken drive shaft at the highlight of the season three weeks ago, the successful driver trio now scored their third class win at their fourth participation in a VLN race this year.
In contrast to all weather forecasts, it was still raining at the beginning of the race Saturday. A strong breeze and the wet track made the qualifying a true tyre lottery and it was only during the very last minutes of the session that fast lap times were possible. Any just in this fast lap, Schiwietz was delayed due to the heavy traffic on the track so that with 85th overall position for the liquid gas driven BMW an only moderate start position was the result. The team was nevertheless not at all intimidated as their rivals, the gas driven Viper driven by Titus and Julius Dittmann, started the race just ahead of them.
David Schiwietz again was the start driver. “The first lap was extremely difficult”, informed the 23 years old race driver. “Another car right in front of me lost oil so that I had to drive through the grass, just as many other cars behind me.” The BMW M3 GTR-S II, equipped and driven by an LPS system of ‚Prins’ and ‚GAS’ who were also looking after the car during the VLN round, was apparently not slowed down as a consequence. Quite a number of offs and accidents of the competitors, however, made the work of the driver rather difficult. In the very first lap already, the race driver from Hückeswagen/ Germany moved ahead of the green Viper and went into the lead of Group SP11 reserved for gas powered vehicles.
After two hours race time, the team changed the drivers for the first time. Whilst Schiwietz finished his stint in the BMW, Victor Smolski now proceeded to his turn. During the weekend, the musician again and again travelled between the Eifel region and the vineyards around Trier where he participated at the same time in some special stages of the Rallye Deutschland. Smolski did however not show any suggestion of fatigue even though he had to struggle baldy with a wrong position of his seat.
A few minutes before the race end, excitement came up again when the M3 was scheduled to come to the pits for a final refuel stop. The team decided to finish the race without this additional stop in order not to loose valuable time – with success. “From half distance of the last lap, we were driving quite slowly”, informed Smolski afterwards. “The tank was empty up to the very last drop.”
The team nevertheless finished with more than one lap advance ahead of the Viper of Titus and Julius Dittmann and scored their third class win of the year. On 29th September 2012, David Schiwietz, Heribert Steiner and Victor Smolski will compete again and fight for a fourth group victory of the current season at the 36th DMV 250 Miles Race.
