Whilst the championship leaders in the Cup started from pole position to a superior start-finish win and took the chequered flag after 23 laps with an advance of 2:35.245 minutes, there were two extremely exciting battles within the next positions. Swiss Racing and WH Motorsport had a close and literally hot fight about second place. The two teams changed positions several times during the four hours heat battle. The Swiss Liechtenstein driver duo finally finished 1:09.693 minutes ahead of the father and son due Hönscheid. It must have been a comfort for them that, after their bad luck in the third race of the season and the fact that finishing fourth they missed the podium narrowly, they were now on the podium.
A little bit further down in the classification there was an equally exciting battle going on about fourth place. The Cup newcomers Florian Wolf and Nils Jung in another GT86 Cup race car hereby finished with a narrow margin ahead of the Belgian team of Pit Lane with “Brody”, Bruno Barbaro and team manager Olivier Muytjens behind the steering wheel in the Toyota GT86 CS-V3.
After the finish, a very exhausted but happy Fabian Wrabetz climbed out of his race car. “Despite the heat we stuck to our plan and completed the race in two double stints. Our car was running perfectly but it was physically extremely demanding, and moreover I had nothing to drink on board during the last two laps. But the water was anyhow hot like tea after only one lap and did not really refresh. Regarding the temperatures inside the cockpit, the Nordschleife has today lived up to its name ‘Green Hell’,” said the 25 years old student of Automotive & Motorsport Engineering.
Nico Ehlert, Principal Engineer Customer Motorsport: “Rain, fog and extreme cold – we have experienced all of that but never a race in such a heat. The conditions were extremely demanding for all of the drivers but also for the material. So I am very happy that our car mastered these very particular challenges today without any technical problem.”
