The fight for the crown in the Opel Astra OPC Cup 2015 is decided. In the tenth and last race of the season of the popular Opel brand cup, a second place was enough for Jari Nuoramo and Juha Hannonen from Finland and for the Luxembourgian Daniel Bohr to establish themselves in first place of the championship standings, with an advance of only two points ahead of their strong competitors. First of all the twins Heinz-Otto and Jürgen Fritzsche together with Finn Hannu Luostarinen who celebrated their fifth win in the current season at the finale. Their seventh result on the podium in this season was nevertheless sufficient for Nuoramo/ Hannonen/ Bohr to put the title defenders in their places with an extremely tight gap.
After 2014, this is the second championship title in the third year of the Cup for the Team Lubner Motorsport. “We are exuberantly happy”, said Bohr. And his normally rather unemotional Finnish team mates thoroughly enjoyed their result. “An unbelievable, unforgettable season”, was Nuoramo’s summary. Into a strong third place of the championship finished Jasmin Preisig and Marcel Senn. The race drivers from Switzerland were gathering more and more pace towards the end of the season and in finishing third, they took their third successive result on the podium at the finale.
“Right from the beginning, it had been our target to gain the championship but we actually somehow lost sight of this target already after the first classified race. Our score of zero points was anything else than a perfect start into the season”, said Bohr. “Thereafter, everything was always working well for us. We had no problems, the team of Mirko Lubner supplied us with a perfectly prepared car at each race and they did not make any mistake at all. Unfortunately, we never really managed to take a win. But this does finally not matter. It is the result that counts and we are the Champions.” More than happy was also team manager Mirko Lubner: “This is awesome! All of the three boys have done a brilliant job. They are good friends and form a fantastic team. It was thus much easier for us to find the right strategy.” Nevertheless, he had some really terrible last minutes at the pit wall: “We knew that if the Ti-Tarvike car won, we would definitely have to finish second. I was trembling as long as the title was not secured yet. I was really scared.”
The Fritzsche twins together with Luostarinen, who were long time considered to be the favourites in the fight for the championship, were doing everything in their power after two retirements to turn the decision in the championship around again in the finale. Despite their fifth class win in the year, they did not succeed. “If you win five out of ten races and in the end you are not classified first in the standings, you are of course disappointed and sad”, explained Jürgen Fritzsche. “But we will cope with it … Congratulations to the new champions!” Team mate Hannu Luostarinen explained what was the reason in the end: “You cannot afford any mistakes in the Opel Astra OPC Cup. It is impossible to equalize two races without any points. There is of course a big disappointment and we cannot take comfort in our class win under these circumstances.” A propos class win: In the statistics of class wins (since 1990), Heinz-Otto Fritzsche is now first with 82 victories.
They were definitely not on the top list this season for most of the people: Jasmin Preisig and Marcel Senn who had their first complete season together in the Opel Astra OPC Cup at the Nordschleife. The duo from Switzerland were doing better and better towards the end of the season and finished the last three races of the season twice in third and once in second position. The reward for their efforts is a third place in the final championship classification. “That is crazy. We would not have expected that at all”, said Preisig. “It had always been our dream to finish in the top three, but we never thought that would be a realistic target.”
Congratulations to the new Champions came also from Opel Motorsport Director Jörg Schrott: “We can look back onto an unbelievable and exciting season which was open until the end. Congratulations to the team of Lubner Motorsport. The Opel Astra OPC Cup has become an established series as part of the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring and we may look forward to a thrilling continuation in the season 2016.”
