FIA GT3, Oschersleben – Race Two Report
Matech's Domination Ends
While the first race at Oschersleben was turned on its head following the first lap mayhem, this one needed a badly mishandled safety car period to throw things up in the air. When all the bits landed, a Corvette took the win, followed by two Vipers; and there wasn’t a Ford GT in sight.
The opening lap was a very different affair to the previous day’s, with almost all the drivers behaving themselves through the first turn. Frederic Makowiecki ran wide in the #10 Hexis DBRS9, but kept it going; but Sascha Bert lost out in the #2 MCR Corvette, when a collision with Thomas Mutsch deranged the suspension and put the car out. The #20 Matech Ford GT suffered a left front puncture and started to drop back through the field, before pitting at the end of the lap.
The order (first 20 positions) at the end of the first lap was 1, 11, 26, 19, 29, 10, 38, 28, 47, 43, 9, 6, 21, 37, 5, 14, 32, 17, 24 and 25. At this point, #42 was in 32nd place, but we’ll return to that later.
James Ruffier led in the #1 MCR Corvette and immediately began to pull away from Bruce Lorgere-Roux in the #11 JMB Ferrari. Andrew Thompson initially began to fall away from the Ferrari, but gradually he managed to haul him back in, the #26 Ascari taking second on lap ten; after a fierce fight that was resolved in the Briton’s favour after a lovely lining-up manoeuvre along the main straight.
Jurgen von Gartzen, meanwhile, was at the head of a long stream of cars, all eager to take fourth from the heavy #19 Ford GT; but despite some chopping and changing further back in the line (Bradley Ellis in the #21 Ford, Nicki Cadei in the #5 Kessel Ferrari and Richard Williams in the #6 Trackspeed Porsche having a good scrap), the order remained unchanged.
The race was starting to develop in an intriguing manner, but all was to change on lap 15.
By this time, Ruffier had built up an eight second lead, despite Thompson’s best efforts to reel him in, and was driving very impressively. Having tasted success in FFSA the week before, the Frenchman looked to have a more than reasonable chance of repeating the achievement, with team mate Arnaud Peyroles also being a useful pedaller. But at Turn One further back, Romain Bera spun his #24 Mustang and the approaching Charles Morgan spun his #30 Morgan in avoidance. At the same time Luca Polato was striking the Armco hard in his #15 S-Berg Gallardo further round the circuit.
Safety car.
Bradley Ellis had just pitted, with almost non-existent brakes on the #21 Ford GT; and when Alex Mortimer rejoined, he found himself behind the SC. Christopher Haase found himself in the same situation, having just taken over the #47 Tech 9 Gallardo from Albert von Thurn Und Taxis in 12th place.
The majority of the field (comprising the faster drivers, in the main) initially stayed out, but when it became clear that the SC period would be a prolonged one, more and more decided to stop. Ruffier stayed out until lap 18, but Frederic Makowiecki remained on track, now in the lead, meaning that Haase and Mortimer – immediately behind the #10 Hexis Aston – could not be waved by the SC.
But when Makowiecki did stop with 27 minutes remaining, the two cars were still behind the safety car, and no wave by took place. With all stops having now taken place, the top 20 was 38, 26, 28, 43, 19, 5, 9, 8, 6, 32, 29, 42, 11, 1, 3, 39, 18, 10, 7, 47 and 21.
Finally, the race went green again with 20 minutes remaining; and with no wave through having taken place, the leaders found themselves having to race in the midst of heavy traffic. Such was the confusion, that it took the TV cameras three laps to even find the leaders.
Thomas Accary’s race was soon run in the #8 Hexis Aston, the car incurring severe rear-end damage at the restart and retiring; while Martin Rich and Martin Matzke had a coming together at Turn One on lap 24. Both cars continued, with the #38 MM Corvette still leading, but now having fallen back into the clutches of Mark Sourd’s #28 Corvette; but Rich had been adjudged to have rejoined one second too early and was given a stop/go penalty and this would cost the Ascari #26 several places.
Just 0.779s separated first from fourth at the end of lap 25 and suddenly Giuseppe de Pasquale was to be found in fifth place in the #42 La Torre Viper, just behind Gilles Vannelet in the #43 sister car; a quite remarkable improvement in fortunes. But the Italian wasn’t content with that position, and moved ahead of the #43 as Rich took his penalty.
Luca Pirri was the highest placed Ford GT driver in 12th; but as he rounded the fast Zeppelin-CAT-Kurve for the 26th time, he was confronted with Pascal Ballay’s #11 JMB Ferrari spinning across the track ahead of him. He tried to take avoiding action, but he had no room and a heavy collision was the result. The Ford was out on the spot, but Ballay somehow continued, eventually finishing 14th.
Arnaud Peyroles was a man on a mission at this point and had climbed back up to fourth in the #1 Corvette. Clearly faster than the car ahead, a podium place looked to be a cert; and could we rule out a win? But he then had the great misfortune to come across Ian Khan in the #20 Ford.
Despite being a lap down, Khan – who had just tapped Phil Quaife’s Jaguar into a spin – unaccountably and uncharacteristically refused to move out of the way, ignoring blue flags and even unlapping himself from Vannelet (now in third place after Sourd had spun down to sixth, and having moved back ahead of Peyroles as a result of Khan’s blocking). For his actions, the Ford driver was handed a post-race penalty of five grid-places for the next round; but the damage had been done and Peyroles and Ruffier were denied their silverware. The Frenchman fought all the way, however, and fell short by just 0.089s at the line.
But Martin Matzke and Jiri Skula claimed their first win of the season for MM-Racing and the first for any team other than Matech Racing, while second and third places were filled by La Torre Motorsport drivers.
“The start was very hard,” said Skula. “I had a faster Corvette behind and it was pushing. When I saw the safety car, I pitted straight away and then martin did a great stint.”
“The stop was the main part of our race,” continued Matzke. “I only had to keep the (Marc Sourd) Corvette behind me and when he spun the pressure was off.”
“Gabriele (Sabitini) drove very well and saved the car,” said a delighted de Pasquale – his car having started 36th and finishing 2nd – “He paid attention to the safety car and the pit stop went well. We were lucky to come out in 12th place, but the car was good and I was able to get up to second. The Corvette was very fast, though, and I couldn’t catch him.”
With the top three cars only managing to score five points between them over the two races, the points position is largely unchanged. However, James Ruffier and Arnaud Peyroles now leads the championship on 29 from Mutsch/Khan on 26 and Bradley Ellis on 22.
MH
