Changeable Eifel weather stops Frikadelli Racing at the 12h Nürburgring
11.09.2022
With the tailwind of two podium successes in a row, Frikadelli Racing arrived at the premiere of the 12h Nürburgring, but this time the team from Barweiler was missing the necessary bit of luck in difficult, changeable conditions. After around 2.5 hours, the #111 Porsche 992 GT3 Cup had to be parked prematurely due to an impact in the “Lauda Curve” area. Up until this point, Klaus Abbelen, Jules and Felipe Laser had been showing strong pace and fighting for the top positions in the AM ranking of the Porsche Endurance Trophy.
“The car was very good throughout the weekend, we were able to match the pace of the front-runners at all times. I, too, felt very comfortable with our new setup and was running great up to the point of impact. In the area of the Lauda curve, however, I was unfortunately surprised by the onset of rain and was no longer able to catch the vehicle,” explains team manager Klaus Abbelen.
From the start, the 12h Nürburgring was dominated by these difficult mixed conditions. So the question of choosing the right tires arose as early as the hunt for times in qualifying. While the track was still completely wet at the beginning, it dried up again in isolated sections by the end of the two-hour session. Felipe Laser placed the #111 Porsche 992 GT3 Cup with a time of 9:14.092 min. in the meantime on a strong second place on the grid in the hard-fought CUP2 class, but was defeated in the very last lap by a few teams with slick tires who took the risk despite the long race distance under the prevailing conditions.
During the race, there were also repeated phases in which the conditions suddenly changed. However, the trio of drivers from Frikadelli Racing initially mastered this challenge without any problems and was able to fight for another top position in the AM ranking of the Porsche Endurance Trophy in the early stages, until the aforementioned incident occurred after around 2.5 hours.
“Unfortunately, the race ended early for us. We're all very disappointed because we dropped a lot of points in terms of the championship - but that's racing. We will come back even stronger in the next races,” said Jules. His teammate Laser adds: "Extremely annoying - but the most important thing is that Klaus is fine. At the next race we will attack together again.”
