“Sometimes it’s good to be the underdog,” Kelvin van der Linde said with a wry smile ahead of the start of track action yesterday at the ‘Ring.
This year the two-time Nürburgring 24 Hours winner is hoping to add a third victory to his CV in the 52nd edition of the race this weekend, but the task promises to be far from easy.
The South African’s previous successes came with Audi Sport back in 2017 and 2022, now his hopes rest on the Lamborghini Huracan platform and Team ABT.
Multiple DTM championship winner ABT needs no introduction as a high-level race team, nor does Lamborghini as a GT3 manufacturer. But the N24 is often a numbers game, Lamborghini has never won the race before and has just one bullet in the chamber of its SP9 PRO gun.
So just what are the team’s expectations for the race?
Prior to N24 race week ABT showed real flashes of outright pace and came achingly close to winning NLS2. There Jordan Pepper went on a fuel-save run, pulled up and lost the lead at the finish line in an effort to prevent the race from running for an additional lap.
Nevertheless, van der Linde feels it’s not wise to read too much into the form shown by teams and manufacturers in the NLS and N24 Qualifiers races prior to the 24-hour race proper.
“You can’t come to the Nurburgring with expectations because it changes so quickly,” he explained. “Last year in the race we thought we had a good package and after two hours it was game over with a puncture. The bosses have expectations, they want to win the race, but from a driver perspective I’ve done this for so many years and I know that you can’t go into this race expecting a win.
You can’t come to the Nurburgring with expectations because it changes so quickly
“And ahead of the 24 it’s always a different story. The thing is, the NLS races have such little emphasis on winning. It’s like in WEC in the past when teams only cared about Le Mans. Winning a race before the 24 Hours here is nice and you can get out a good press release, but people are so focused on the 24-hour race that the races beforehand are almost irrelevant.
“We use those races to try different things on set up and on tyre choice. You sometimes compromise your result to go testing in those races, because there are not many days you have access to the full circuit.”
For this year’s race van der Linde will share the #27 Huracan with Marco Mapelli and Jordan Pepper. It’s a line-up he feels can challenge. The team’s decision to run with Michelin also gives him confidence, especially with track action so far this week being held in changeable conditions.
“I think the Michelin runners are all relieved,” he added. “The Falken and Yokohama guys are probably having a tougher time sleeping as that’s where their weakness lies. I love seeing a tyre war though, honestly. I love seeing guys like Falken putting in the effort they have over so many years. They deserve a reward for their investment. Hats off to them.
“But we have a safe bet with Michelin and we are happy.”
After so many years racing with Audi, adapting to the Huracan hasn’t been simple, he explained to DSC that there are clear advantages to racing with a brand like Lamborghini at an event like this one.
“I’m finding it a challenge,” he said. “The Audi was one of the best cars around the Nordschleife, it was a product that you knew you had a chance to win every time because it was routine for everyone at Audi. They knew how the system was working, the car was reliable. Now you feel like you are starting again from scratch with a manufacturer that doesn’t have that background at the Nordschleife.
“Lamborghini is incredibly successful in sprint racing, but this is a different animal and we’ve had to work on reliability to get the car into a window where you can run it for 24 hours and know that nothing is going to happen.
“But it’s been really positive though and Lamborghini has been really supportive. What I like is that they still have the racing passion, if you have a request as a driver they do it immediately. At Audi, they had a system, and their customer programme was the same every year.
“Because it’s a smaller group of people, they are more flexible.”
The ABT programme benefits greatly from factory support, with van der Linde describing the team in the garage as a 50-50 split between ABT and Lamborghini.
“Lamborghini has a massive interest in this race,” he said. “It’s a race they’ve never won so they are putting a lot of energy into it. And with Red Bull there are a lot of partners and shareholders interested in this.
“We have one car, it’s a small group, but we have adaptability. When you are in a much bigger works effort there are more processes and steps to get anything approved.
“Now, if you want something, and it makes sense according to the data the changes get made to the car for the next session. That’s where our strength is.”
