Bad Luck!!
The ADAC ACAS H&R Cup, the third race of the VLN-Championship run on last Saturday, was one to forget. During qualifying everyone was lucky as it was the first dry weather qualifying of this season with the sun was shining bright. We had to try several set-ups as we haven’t run much in dry weather conditions yet. The first few laps were used for this, though the best lap times are normally ran at the beginning of the one and half hour qualifying session. There were a lot of cars that pushed themselves to the limit and this caused a lot of crashes. It resulted in a lot of places where everyone had to back off a little. It is a shame for those teams as the 24hour is just around the corner. This also was a disadvantage for us, as we still had to run our flying lap. It all resulted in an 30th place, which was looking at the circumstances not all that bad.
The start of the race was taken care of by team owner Michael Schratz. Michael was able to establish very constant lap times and could keep his position thru out his stint. When he entered the pit lane to hand along the steering wheel to Nick de Bruijn the team found out that there was a problem with the car. Oil was leaking from the gearbox and the entire floor was covered in it. An oil line from the gearbox came loose due vibrations. Luckily we found out before we reentered the track and so we could prevent any further damage. Unfortunately we could not repair the problem on short term and so Steam Racing had to retire early from the race.
Nick told; “It is very unfortunate that this happens just ahead of the 24hour. Though on the other hand I prefer this to happen now then during the 24hour race. For me it was a very short weekend with only 2 qualifying laps. In these 2 laps I was able to shown good speed and this gives a little morale boost for what is to come in a few weeks.”
Michael; “Luckily we found the problem quickly and so we could prevent any further damage. Now we are going to prepare us for the 24hour race and so we have a long 2 weeks ahead of us.”
| 05 Oct | Nice result in the cold cold Eiffel!! |
| 31 Aug | Nice result, breaks in half.! |
| 22 Jul | Real Eiffel Conditions!! |
| 30 Jun | Short, but strong weekend!!! |
| 15 Jun | FINALLY TOP-10 |
| 05 Jun | New Team!!.. |
| 27 May | Solid Performance!! |
| 21 Apr | The "Green hell" lives up to its name!! |
| 08 Apr | Nick de Bruijn has an blasting debut at the Nürburgring with Porsche |
