VLN 2018: Race 05 (August 19th)
19.08.2018
After two consecutive race wins, Frikadelli Racing kicked off the second half of the Endurance Championship Nürburgring (VLN) with an eighth place finish and one retirement.
For the fifth out of nine championship rounds, the Porsche number 31 shared by Norbert Siedler from Austria and his German team mates Lance David Arnold (Duisburg) and Alex Müller (Rees) crossed the line in sixth position after a great charge through the field, before they were eventually classified eighth. Their 911 GT3 R had to start from the pit lane because of a so-called code-60 penalty for exceeding a particular speed limit in qualifying. Because they started from the pit lane, they didn’t complete the warm-up lap and so one minute was added to their race time. Hence how they dropped from sixth to eighth. At times the Frikadelli Porsche was up to P4 in the race but lost additional time when the brake pads needed to be changed at the final pit stop.
The sister car, shared by team principal Klaus Abbelen, Sabine Schmitz (both from Barweiler near the Nürburgring) and Felipe Laser (Leipzig, Germany) started sixth on the grid for the sole six-hour race of the season. After Laser’s opening stint, Sabine Schmitz jumped in with the car in P6 but subsequently retired after a collision with another Porsche on lap 14. The car got stuck in gravel with broken suspension.
