Date: 20 August 2016//

Place: Nürburgring, Germany//

Organiser: VLN //

Team: Adrenalin Motorsport

—

Driving Cup5 BMW M2351 Racing

I was invited to share my 24H car, the Cup5 #668 BMW M235i Racing, with Urs Zund for this VLN and with just the two of us we would be racing 2 full hours each – nice!

Qualifying did not put us on front row; with my time from the first half-wet quali lap we were only 17th of 18! Oh well, I was going to start so maybe I could catch a couple of cars in my stint? The race had perfect weather conditions, and the car felt very good so I could push a bit, but it’s hard to overtake identical cars on the Nordschleife. Coming into corner 1 after the first lap, the car in front of me took the wide line and cut across my front just as the car behind me decided to outbreak me; the inevitable collision took them both out whereas I could continue without a scratch… I pitted for fuel after 5 laps to avoid the queue at the pump, and set out for another 7 laps. A couple of relatively clear laps followed and I was able to improve my personal best lap time in this car with ca. 10 seconds to 9:22 and when I handed over the car to Urs we were 9 places higher at P8 – very happy. 🙂

Urs continued the good progress and pitted for fuel in 6th position half an hour before the end – could we manage to climb to 5th and end on the podium? Alas, on his outlap with fresh tyres he spun into the barrier and damaged the front suspension. With the car stranded out on the Nordschleife we had to accept a DNF this time. 🙁