As night progressed, the lead frequently swapped back and forth between Audi and Porsche - the Audi appearing to have slightly better pace, but the Porsche's economy advantage helping to redress the balance.
You might have been forgiven for assuming that this would continue to the flag, however shortly after 5am, Car 99 - the R8 LMS made an unscheduled pit stop - just 3 laps after the previous one - resulting in an entire rear axle change.
All credit to the Audi mechanics - they completed this in just 9 minutes, with the car rejoining a lap down on the leaders, however this was not the end of the car's problem, and it drops further down the field.
With this further attrition, the running is now Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, with BMW's car 25 being about 6 minutes behind the Porsche Hybrid.
Continuing a remarkable run up the field is the Farnbacher Ferrari F430, now with a podium in sight, and continuing to catch the lead cars... one only can wonder where they would be if qualifying had gone well!
Volkswagen this year chose to run all its Sciroccos as CNG fueled cars, after the successful debut of two last year. They were the sole runners in the 'AT' class, which gave them an obvious guarantee of a class win.
Interestingly the lead car in their comparable petrol engined class (SP3T), was an Audi TTRS, so one wonders if that influenced the decision to run the Sciroccos on alternative fuels?
As dawn approached, I headed back for a couple of hours shut eye, I'd decided to shoot early morning from Pflanzgarten and so needed to be alert!
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1 comments:
Loved reading thhis thanks
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