Hockenheimring (DEU)
September 13th, 2011
After his forced break in motorsports Swede Max Nilsson was finally able to catch a whiff of racing air again at the Hockenheimring.
In 2010 and 2011 he competed on international Formula 1 tracks in the FIA GT1 World Championship with a NISSAN GT-R and a Lamborghini Murcielago. However, he had bad luck with the latter one at the Sachsenring race in May this year when he was involved in a crash. After that, his former team was not able to repair the car again.
Nilsson is actively involved in the preparation for the next season, testing several cars and teams in the GT3 class. At the beginning of the year he had already taken the opportunity to drive an Audi R8 LMS in Germany and Portugal. However, the results were not reliable due to bad weather conditions during the tests. Nevertheless, it became clear that Max Nilsson can also be competitive in the GT3 class.
Yesterday the Swede made his debut in a Mercedes Benz SLS GT3 AMG. A dream sports car with a 6.3 litre V8 engine and about 550hp. After a seat adjustment and a briefing by members of motorsports team HEICO from Germany Nilsson used the opportunity to complete the first few kilometres at the Hockenheimring in beautiful weather. He got used to his workplace very quickly, setting better times from to lap to lap. Everybody was happy with the performance at the end of the testing day.
Max Nilsson: “I have not been sitting in a racing car for quite a long time and I was afraid that I had forgotten everything. In racing you need to keep up all the time in order to be able to maintain the concentration and reaction in high speed. However, after a few kilometres everything worked fine again. GT3 cars are driven completely differently. They have electronic driving aids like the ABS brake. You have to brake differently compared to a GT1 car. But you can learn it and I think that I was able to implement it quite well during the tests. The HEICO team was very professional and extremely supportive.
I am happy that I am back in a racing car and I would like to test different brands and teams before deciding what I am going to driving in 2012.”
