Despite their bad luck in the qualifying, Adam Osieka and Steve Jans showed an excellent performance at the VLN season’s highlight, the Opel 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal Race. They finally finished in second place in the class of Porsche Carrera Cup vehicles and they were again shown in the top ten.
The track conditions were quite difficult at this seventh VLN race. There was only a short time window in the qualifying to set fast lap times before it started to rain. GetSpeed unluckily missed just this time window due to a small off by Steve Jans. So the Porsche of Adam Osieka and Steve Jans finished the qualifying only in 52nd overall place and were qualified in second grid position of their class.
Steve Jans from Luxembourg who started the race for the team was brilliantly catching up on the still wet track in his stint. His race car was fitted with rain tyres and he was able to move up by 35 positions before going into the lead of their class. At the end of his stint, Jans brought the Vodafone-Porsche to the pits while he was leading the class, changed to slick tyres and handed over the steering wheel to Adam Osieka. However, the latter had to take a stop-and-go-penalty already in his first lap, which was the result of a speeding offence previously committed in the turn of Steve Jans. Despite the huge loss of time of one and a half minutes, Osieka succeeded in fighting his way back close to the leaders due to the different strategies and took over the lead again. The remaining part of the race turned out to become a true strategy thriller.
In his second stint, Steve Jans again showed a strong performance. He controlled the race and his competitors until his pursuer went off at Exmühle. As if by a miracle, he was however able to resume the race and the fight about first place continued. After the again successful stint of Jans, he handed the car back to Osieka. In his turn, Osieka set the fastest lap time in his class with 8:31.060 minutes – Adam Osieka was of course pleased: “This underlines once again the superior setup and the competitiveness of our 991 Porsche.” Jens then completed the final turn though, unfortunately, they missed the class win in the end. The off in the qualifying, the resulting bad position on the starting grid, the unfortunate pit stop and the time penalty spoiled their win.
