Season starter - two IVRA races
The season has started again, finally! We kicked it off with two weekends of IVRA back to back, first the IVRA Endurance 1000 km at Nürburgring GP where we competed with two cars. One LMP2 that was invited based on a good performance last year and also a BMW M4 GT3 that we qualified for this year. It’s clear that this year brings one of the toughest starting fields that we have ever encountered in IVRA, which makes it really fun to race and it triggers us to perform well.
The first race gave some good answers on our pace, both cars were in the thick of it during the race and we had a good chance of a good finish. Unfortunately, the LMP2 car was involved in an incident that led to race-ending damage to the car, meaning that the race ended prematurely. The GT3 car was also involved in an incident when lapping another car, leading to a penalty which dropped the car in the field. In the end, we didn’t finish where we had hoped but we felt that the pace was there and that for the next time we need to keep ourselves out of trouble.
Only one week later, it was time to go to Motegi for the first race of the IVRA Clubsport season where we had a brand new Porsche 992 GT3 Cup competing, also here in a very competitive field. Magnus and Niklas piloted the car and showed in the qualifying session that there is no lack of pace when they put it on the second row in P3. During the race, running a slightly different strategy than most of the competitors paid off, but the race was filled with rear-ending incidents and our car suffered no less than four of them, spinning the car around. After that, it was hard to hope for a podium finish anymore, and the car dropped back through the field.
Overall, maybe not the season starter we had hoped for, but it’s promising that we show pace and given the long summer break some rust is expected in the driving. But for the next race, we have no excuses but to finish well!