The Wochenspiegel Team Manthey (WTM-Racing) has concluded the endurance racing season 2013 with a brilliant performance. Georg Weiss, Michael Jacobs and Oliver Kainz in their Wochenspiegel-Porsche 997 GT3 RSR finished fifth overall at the finale of the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring, the 38th DMV Münsterlandpokal, and also secured their fifth win in class SP7.
Their strong performance was nevertheless not sufficient to win the VLN title they had hoped for. The WTM driver trio (70.39 points) had to concede to be beaten by the brothers Dirk and Tim Groneck (71.76 points) who finished in fourth class position with their Renault Clio. This was sufficient to clear the situation in favour of them. Weiss: “Congratulations, the Groneck brothers are well-deserved champions. They were able to withstand the pressure and took the title with their own efforts. We have done everything that was possible today. We have won the class despite the strong competition and finished fifth overall. We are happy with what we have achieved. We have in particular never had the intention to fight for the VLN title.”
The last race day started with some problems for WTM Racing. The weather forecast had predicted the last warm day for the year 2013 but this was not really to be noticed in the morning practice. The track was completely wet. So the drivers first of all confined themselves to completing the obligatory laps, hoping that the conditions would get better afterwards. All of the three WTM drivers complained about a lack of grip. The conditions, however, did not get better during the remainder of the session. Furthermore, Kainz suffered some problems during his fast laps: “There was a lot of oil on the track and then there were double waved yellow flags in a section. In addition I had some problems to get the rear tyres to the right temperature.” The Wochenspiegel-Porsche finally finished with a disappointing 21st position on the grid.
Things should turn out to become much better during the race then. The track was still wet at the beginning but there was a lot of evidence that the conditions would change very soon. Almost the complete field nevertheless took the start on rain tyres. Start driver Kainz managed to complete the first lap without any problems and was catching up pretty quickly. At the end of the third lap, the Wochenspiegel-Porsche came to the pits to change tyres and the team had already moved up into tenth position at this point. The WTM-Racing team continued to push hard. Jacobs had a close fight with the Busch-Audi R8 LMS over many laps and defended his fourth place successfully.
Final driver Weiss then had to let the Alzen-BMW Z4 GT3 pass and crossed the finish line in fifth position. In class SP7, the driver trio finished with an advance of three minutes ahead of the next Porsche. Weiss: “We have won but also lost somehow. There is, however, no need for us to hide ourselves in view of our performance. We have had a fantastic season on which we are very proud.”
