‘Racing one’ Ferrari drivers Markus Lungstrass, Christian Kohlhaas and Carsten Struwe took the win in class SP8 at the 45th Adenauer ADAC Simfy-Trophy, the fourth round of the season in the 2014 VLN endurance racing championship. The Ferrari team from Andernach, a town based on the left bank of the Rhine in Rhineland Palatinate, finished the race which was prematurely stopped with the red flag after 3 hours race time due to an accident for their first time in the current season as winners in their category.
In qualifying already Markus Lungstrass had set a new fastest time for the team with 8:33,710 minutes. “I scored this time right on my very first out lap. According to the indications on my race navigator system, the second lap would have been even faster. Up to the Bergwerk, I had improved my lap time by 7 seconds already in this second lap but then came into sector with double yellow flags and the qualifying was afterwards suspended due an accident. So we didn’t have another opportunity to improve our time.”
For start driver Lungstrass, the race start was likewise thrillingly. “I had a really cool start! Right after the start I was in the middle of the GT3 traffic and I was able to keep up to the close battles with the stronger GT3 cars when the situation had become a little chaotic after a few spins. In the first lap, I even had a short fight with the GT3 Ferrari but it was then pulling away little later. I was pushing like hell! The car setup was perfect and my stint was absolutely super. There was another fantastic battle with the Getspeed Porsche. However, we took it rather easy today in the traffic, in particular when we were lapping other cars of the smaller classes. Our advance had been so big by that time that we could take due care in these manoeuvres.”
Right after the start, the team was leading in their class and none of their competitors – two Lexus and two Aston Martin respectively as well as another Ferrari were competing in the same class – was able to catch up during the running of the race. After 18 laps in total, they finally finished with an advance of almost 5 minutes ahead of the second placed competitor in their class. In the overall classification, they finished 33rd. Almost 30 GT3 cars had taken the start at this last race before next month’s 24h Race.
Team manager Martin Kohlhaas was more than happy with the good performance of his team after the disappointment in the last race: “Everything was running perfect in the race and we were catching up brilliantly. And we still had some tactics in reserve. Markus has shown a super performance again and Christian and Carsten, our two other drivers, have also done a perfect job. We were particular delighted that we had achieved our declared goal to set an 8:30 lap time already now and also that we are now aware that we can push even harder with our car!”
The next race on the calendar of the ‘racing one’ team is the 5th VLN round on 5th July. The team from Andernach will then try to set another fastest lap at the legendary Nordschleife with their race car.
