At 15:00 on 15th May 2010, the flag dropped, the lights went out, and the 38th ADAC Nürburgring 24 hour was under way.
I'd opted to shoot the start from Hatzenbach - a change from last year, when I was on the first corner... Whilst Hatzenbach was a few corners in, and left the opportunity for some over takes, I thought it fairly sure that the cars would still be tightly bunched up together, with the 4 Audis leading in formation.
How wrong was I... over the loud speakers, I could hear a very excited commentator.. and it was quite clear what was going on!
"Marcel Tiemann im Manthey Porsche rückt auf den vierten Platz ... den dritten Platz ... den zweiten Platz ... ersten Platz ..."
Later Marcel Tiemann would simply state, that he warmed up his tyres correctly, and thus had an easy job passing the Audis, but it was a devastating statement of intent from the winners of the last 4 years.
After the first lap, the Audi's looked like sitting ducks - with the Haribo car number 8 moving up to 3rd - Porsche's decision to drop the RSR, and develop the GT3-R for the VLN series was beginning to look like a good one...
Further back the field, the Farnbacher Ferrari was moving up - after its blistering pace in free practice, and night qualifying both in the wet, it had spun during second qualifying, and had failed to set a time - so had started 42rd... it was up to 27th after 1 lap... and work was on for it to catch the front runners.
After an hour, the cars started to pit stop, where the Porsche Hybrid demonstrated its economy benefits - running longer, rather than stopping after 7, which allowed it to briefly take the lead, but also to move up behind the Manthey car number 1.
0 comments:
Post a Comment