ADAC GT4 Oschersleben

Race weekend at Oschersleben being the first race weekend of ADAC GT4 Germany, a new championship for the whole team with a brand-new car, there were a lot of unknowns and a steep learning curve was ahead of us. In free practice we felt good in the car and were tweaking the setup to have a good car for qualifying. It was great to see that both me and Maxime want the same car handling so no compromises have to be made.

 

In qualifying 1 where I was driving, we got unlucky with red flag in the middle of the session and afterwards just a few laps with the last one being blocked by traffic. From testing we knew that I needed a couple more laps in order to get up to speed with the new tires and thus in the end the result was very underwhelming with P20.

 

Anyway, we threw that behind us and focused to make the most out of race 1. With a setup change we gambled and wanted to see if what we did would improve the cars performance. This proved to be a good decision and the car felt nimble when racing against others. I was comfortable with having all other cars close to me and driving in a train where there is no room for error since in last year’s M2 cup, many races were very close and it really taught me how to behave when being in a train of cars competing for position. I could get up from P20 to P18 in the couple laps I had between safety car right after the start and FCY before pit window.

In the end we got our luck back with FCY in the pit window so I went into the pits at the very first moment which in the end gained us about five to six positions and because overtaking is so tricky on this track, it was the move that put us in a position where we wouldn’t be otherwise. In the end Maxime managed to make the most of our nimble car and he had mega pace which got us P10 at the finish line.

 

In qualifying 2, Maxime was pushing with our improved setup from race 1 and once again bad luck struck us with traffic in sector 3 on a fast lap which was looking to attack P5. When he wanted to push for a lap afterwards, one car was driving in the fast lane with leaking oil and thus there was no possibility to improve so it was going to be a start from P10.

 

We were not really happy how the qualifying ended, simply because there was much more speed and traffic ruined possibility to start further up the grid, but nevertheless we knew that our race pace was among the best and we set out to do full push for the whole race 2 like in race 1.

 

At the start of Race 2, Maxime managed to get the car from P10 to P6 before turn three which greatly helped our chances to be in the fight for podium positions. At the end of his stint when coming into the pits for driver change, he was in P4, on the bumper of a Porsche in third place which pitted in the same lap as him. When I got into the car, I went out right on the rear bumper of mentioned Porsche and had to battle straight away. In a couple of laps, I got ahead when we were alongside on finish straight and finished the move into turn one and two. The pace was great and I managed to pull a gap right away. I was on maximum push and saw that I was catching P2 quite quickly. In the next laps I caught up to a BMW in second place and before P4 caught up to me I overtook him on exit of the final corner. From that point on I once again pulled a gap behind me and was slowly catching up to P1 but at the end they were too far and we finished second, just 1.9 seconds behind P1 after starting from P10. It was an amazing result for the whole team and I have never screamed louder with happiness than when crossing the finish line. We showed that even when the weekend started quite badly with P20 in quali 1, we did everything and pushed each other to end on P2 in our second race with GT4. It really sets out the tone for the rest of the season and displays that me and Maxime work great together and proves how much the M2 cup taught us.