Adam Christodoulou has been racing at the Nordschleife for the past few years, but up until 2014 the young Brit has been plying his trade in GT4 and production cars. Away from the Green Hell he has, of course, also driven many GT3 cars, scoring a victory in the Barcelona 24 Hours in a McLaren MP4-12C GT3. For this year’s Nürburgring 24 Hours he has signed with Black Falcon to pedal one of their Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3, sharing the gullwinged sports car with Hubert Haupt, Abdulaziz Al Faisal and Yelmer Buurman. DSC caught up with him at the last VLN race, which was also Adam’s first chance to race the car before the big race this weekend.
“In addition to my VLN outing with the SLS, I’ve also had the chance to test it during one of the AMG driving days. Last year I did the whole Blancpain Endurance Series with Black Falcon and the SLS so I know the team and the car pretty well, but it was an eye-opener when I first took it around the Nordschleife,” he admitted. “First of all, the car feels much bigger compared to those cars that I’ve taken around here in the past. It definitely took me some laps to get used to it, but I feel very confident ahead of our assault on the 24 Hours. Our driver line-up is really strong and I hope that we’ll finish inside the top 10, maybe even the top five.”
With his experience in many smaller cars, the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 felt quite different to him. “Approaching the first corners was definitely a little bit scary, because you get to the corners faster and then you also have much higher cornering speeds. Second, there a many more corners that I’m now taking flat-out. You can definitely feel the downforce and aero of the car – at the places where a car usually gets light, it feels like the SLS is planted onto the road. Even at the Flugplatz or Pflanzgarten sections you don’t feel the jump, whereas in a GT4 car for sure you’ll feel the lift off and landing.”
Compared to its sister car, which sees defending race champion Jeroen Bleekemolen joined by Lance-David Arnold, Andreas Simonsen and Christian Menzel, the Christodoulou/ Buurman/ Haupt/ al-Faisal line-up perhaps doesn’t look so strong, but should be an effective backup for Black Falcon in case anything gets wrong with the lead car.
Sören Herweg
