On Saturday morning already, when the track was still wet in some sections, Arne Hoffmeister had been the fastest Toyota driver and gained pole position with his GT86 and start number 534 with a time of 11:12.307 minutes. “We started to attack right at the beginning of the qualifying session as the conditions were still pretty good. When it then started to rain heavier is was clear that our time would not be beaten”, said Arne Hoffmeister. In the race then, the conditions were perfect, his team mate Fabian Wrabetz went into the lead right from the start and was able to extend the gap continuously. “When I took over the car, we already had quite a comfortable advantage. I could fully concentrate on setting my own pace and on controlling the race”, said Hoffmeister after the race finish. “It was only towards the end when there was less traffic on the track due to all the retirements that I put the pedal to the metal again”, said the 26-year-old hobby racer, who had also set the fastest lap time with 9:43.834 minutes, with a smile in his face.
“Super happy” about second place was Olivier Muytjens, especially as the Belgian driver had to do the race without his two regular drivers ‘Brody’ and Bruno Barbaro who were unavailable. He engaged on short notice the VLN-experienced Joe Moore from Great Britain. “Joe has done a really great job even though he didn’t know the car. We had a really perfect race today”, said Muytjens after the prizegiving ceremony.
In the first part of the race, Kevin Hönscheid (WH Motorsport) was also still able to fight for a position on the podium and initially he was really the closest contender of Hoffmeister. In the third lap at the section of Wehrseifen, however, there was an “unfriendly contact with an enemy” as team manager Wolfgang Hönscheid described the bad luck of his son. During an emergency pit stop, the badly damaged right front part of the car was repaired with a lot of tape and the father-son driver duo still made it to cross the finish line in fifth place.
