Along with their sixth success in the sixth race of the season, the Cup defenders this time also succeeded in performing a treble. They won the race, they scored fastest time in the practice (9:47.194 min.) and fastest lap in the race (9:48.736 min.). “It was however not as easy as it looks when you check the results”, said the exhausted team manager Uwe Isert after the finish. “First of all, we lost a lot of our advance due to some sections under yellow flags and then we got some problems with the power steering in our car. These problems were also the reason why Fabian Wrabetz spun off the track and we had to proceed to an unscheduled pit stop to change tyres. So I am all the more happy that we managed to win the race”, said Isert who was so happy about their success. However, it was not a perfect start-finish-victory. Due to the different pit strategies, the Cup leaders lost their lead temporarily after their 13th race lap. When their competitors then also had completed their scheduled pit stops, Hoffmeister and Wrabetz were back in the lead. They finished the race thereafter superiorly. The Dörr driver duo again succeeded in finishing in the top 100 in the overall classification of the VLN race. The team had started from 111th position on the grid and were able to gain not less than the amazing number of 20 positions in the race.
In the first part of the race, the Belgian team of Pit Lane had a fascinating duel about second position with the Swiss Racing Team. The two cars hereby changed positions several times. In the second half of the race, Swiss Racing was no more able to go the same pace. “First of all, we had fantastic duels about second place but we lost some time after our first pit stop. It seems that we stayed out too long on the used tyres. We suffered some understeering and lost speed. We could perhaps have done better had we changed to fresh tyres earlier”, said team manager Roland Baumann who was definitely disappointed about having missed second place.
The lap times of the Pit Lane drivers, too, became slower in the second half of the race. “But that was completely normal and as anticipated”, said team representative Olivier Muytjens. “The performances of our drivers are different and the faster ones were this time driving in the first half of the race. We lost the race out on the track”, said Muytjens who showed a sporting attitude despite having missed the podium.
WH Motorsport in contrast was very fast and very consistent. At the beginning they were in fourth position and, lying in wait, the father and son duo gained position by position throughout the further running of the four hour race. “At the beginning, we lost some time and unfortunately also the contact to the leading group due to chasing behind some slower cars. Thereafter, our race was however running as scheduled. We could catch up and finally moved up into second place. A really fantastic performance of the whole team”, said Kevin Hönscheid happily after the prizegiving ceremony.
Nico Ehlert, Principal Engineer Customer Motorsport: “A fantastic motorsport weekend in bright weather at the Eifel track. We wish to congratulate the Team Dörr-Motorsport for another brilliant team performance. The absolutely exciting fights for the podium positions were really fantastic. The TMG GT 86 Cup has contributed to an absolutely remarkable VLN race.”
