28 cars showed up for the third ADAC GT Masters weekend at the hilly Sachsenring.
Non-full-season entries came from Vita4One with two of their BMW Z4 GT3s, where Paul Green/ Niclas Kentenich and Yelmer Buurman/ Martin Matzke shared driving duties; Schulze Motorsport and their Nissan GT-R GT3, for Tobias and Michael Schulze; and a sole Corvette Z06 GT3 from RWT Racing Team, where Gerd Beisel and Sven Barth took the steering wheel. Also some other changes to the driver lineups were made, with the most prominent one being Chris Mamerow moving into the YACO Racing Audi R8 LMS Ultra, replacing Dino Lunardi, who was on GT Tour duty. Mamerow’s seat in one of the Prosperia Audis was taken by Markus Winkelhock, who moved over from the sister car he shared with Rahel Frey. Frey’s new teammate was Christopher Haase. Also still sitting out after his bad shunt at the Spa GT Masters round was Jörg Müller, his seat in the Schubert BMW Z4 GT3 was taken by Jens Klingmann.
The first qualifying session saw Christopher Mies in one of the three Prosperia C.Abt Racing Audi R8 LMS ultras taking pole position, ahead of Christian Engelhart in the Schütz Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R. Max Sandritter showed his best performance of the season, when he put the Schubert BMW on grid position three. Overall, Qualifying 1 was a good success for Prosperia C.Abt Racing, who also took positions six (Rahel Frey) and nine (Christer Jöns). In the second qualifying session, Jens Klingmann scored the pole position for the Sunday race, ahead of René Rast in the Prosperia Audi he shared with Christopher Mies. Making it a BMW – Audi – BMW sandwich was Dominik Baumann, who put the second Schubert BMW into third.
Race One
The Saturday race turned into the Christopher Mies and René Rast show, with the two taking an uncontested lights-to-flag victory.
Mies, starting the car, only felt the heat when the green flag was waved as he had to hold of Christian Engelhart in the Schütz-Porsche in the run to the first corner. From there on Mies build up a pretty sizable lead, turning the car over at mid-distance with a 6.7 seconds advantage to the nearest competitor. In the run to the flag René Rast controlled his lead gap and crossed the line 7.8 seconds ahead of second place.
The fight for the other podium places was interesting throughout the race, with the sole Lambda Ford GT, the Schütz-Porsche and the Schubert-BMW of Klingmann/Sandritter fighting for positions two through four.
When the pitstop window opened Frank Kechele dived first for the pitlane, turning the Ford GT over to Dominik Schwager. When the other two cars completed their pitstop Schwager had moved up from fourth into second place, but his luck was short lived as a stuck throttle pedal caused him to go off and crash heavily into the Armco.
Reduced to a duel, Nicolas Armindo was able to hold off a charging Jens Klingmann to take home second place when the checkered flag came out, giving the Schütz-Motorsport Team a season first podium. Crossing in fourth place, the Tonino by Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R of Robert Renauer and Martin Ragginger was able to hold off the HTP-Motorsport Mercedes Benz of Maximilian Buhk and Maximilian Götz.
Positions six and seven went to MS Racing and their Audi R8 LMS ultra, giving last year’s championship winning team their first points with their new cars. Daniel Dobitsch and Aditya Patel crossed the line ahead of their teammates Sebastian Asch and Florian Stoll. The other HTP-Motorsport, Polarweiss Racing, Mercedes Benz of Sergey Afanasiev and Andreas Simonsen finished eighth, with the guesting Vita4One scoring points as Yelmer Buurman and Martin Matzke crossed the line in ninth place. At their home race YACO Racing was able to score their first ADAC GT Masters points by finishing tenth. With the help of Alfred Renauer, René Bourdeaux was able to take home the win in the Gentlemen-Trophy ahead of Christina Nielsen and Toni Seiler.
Race Two
Preparations for the second race of the weekend literally started off with a bang, as thunder and lightning around the track postponed the green flag by about 15 minutes.
The delay, plus a wet track, didn’t keep Dominik Baumann from doing a do-or-die manoeuvre into the first corner, when the reigning FIA GT3 champion shot himself from grid position three into the lead, outbraking both cars on the front row. Slotting right behind Baumann was his teammate and polesitter Jens Klingmann and both Schubert BMW Z4 GT3s were able to get away from their competitors when the track started to dry out.
At the time the pitstop window opened the two BMWs had build up a gap of around eight seconds to their nearest competitors. It was Klingmann who dived into the pitlane first, turning the BMW over to his teammate Max Sandritter, who also took on slick tires. This was the key to Sandritter getting by the sister Z4. When Baumann got to the pits a lap later and the slick-shod Claudia Hürtgen returned to the track, Sandritter was already long gone. His outlap was about ten seconds quicker than the inlap of his teammate. But a year’s first race win for Sandritter and Klingmann wasn’t secured yet, as, with about 15 minutes left on the clock, debris on the track brought out the safety car and bunched up the field.
But when the field was let loose once again, Klingmann kept his head up high and took the chequered flag ahead of Claudia Hürtgen, making it a Schubert 1-2. Crossing the line in third was the Schütz Porsche, but because of a yellow flag infringement Christian Engelhart and Nicolas Armindo received a 30 seconds time penalty, moving them back into 11th place. Also receiving time penalties were Rahel Frey/ Christopher Haase (Prosperia C.Abt Racing Audi R8 LMS ultra) and Diego Alessi/ Daniel Keilwitz (Callaway Competition Corvette Z06 GT3), moving dropping out of the points-positions.
Third place went to Saturday’s winners Christopher Mies and René Rast, ahead of Mario Farnbacher and Philipp Frommenwiler in one of the Farnbacher Porsches. After retiring during Race 1, the DB-Motorsport duo of Jeroen den Boer and Simon Knap was able to get a little bit of redemption by finishing fifth. The two Polarweiss-Racing Mercedes-Benz finished sixth (Afanasiev/ Simonsen) and tenth (Buhk/ Götz). Another Prosperia C.Abt Racing Audi scoring points was the car of Christer Jöns and Markus Winkelhock in seventh, ahead of the MS-Racing Audi of Florian Stoll and Sebastian Asch. Scoring its first ever top-ten finish in the ADAC GT Masters was the Nissan GT-R driven by Michael and Tobias Schulze, crossing the line in ninth.
In his ADAC GT Masters debut Gerd Beisel was able to take home the Race 2 win in the Gentlemen Trophy. Second went to Remo Lips ahead of René Bourdeaux.
Christopher Mies and René Rast now lead the championship overall on 75 points and hold a 16 points advantage on Claudia Hürtgen and Dominik Baumann. After a partly problematic weekend, Simon Knap and Jeroen den Boer lost their championship lead and find themselves in third place, 17 points adrift. Fourth are Sergey Afanasiev and Andreas Simonsen. René Bourdeaux took the Gentlemen Trophy lead, holding a four point advantage over Christina Nielsen. Paul Green, despite missing the season-opener at Oschersleben, finds himself in third, albeit 33 points behind Bourdeaux.
Results:
Qualifying 1
Qualifying 2
Race 1
Race 2
The next round of the ADAC GT Masters takes place August 2nd to the 4th at the Nürburgring.
Sören Herweg
