FIA GT1 World Championship
Sachsenring (GER), May 13th-15th, 2011
Last weekend, the fourth race of the FIA GT1 World Championship took place at the Sachsenring in Germany.
45,000 spectators were able to feel the excitement of motorsports in mostly good weather. In addition to the GT1 World Championship the German GT3 super sports cars competed in the ADAC GT Masters series. Max Nilsson (SWE) knows the Sachsenring from his Formula 3 races with Swiss Racing Team. Therefore the track is not new to him. He is now competing in the second FIA GT1 World Championship season with the same team sharing his Lamborghini Murcielago LP 670 R-SV #6 with Czech Jiri Janak.
The free practice session on Friday afternoon went well for Lamborghini #6. The Czech had never competed at the Sachsenring before and completed as many laps as possible in order to familiarise himself with the track. In the pre-qualifying Nilsson managed to set great lap times. However, his practice session was interrupted for 30 minutes because of a leak in the gearbox which forced him to pit and get the damage repaired. Consequently, he was only able to complete 9 laps.
In Saturday’s qualifying the setup of the car was not right and Nilsson had to fight massive oversteer. After driving off the track into the gravel he was forced to pit to remove all the gravel from the car. Shortly afterwards, the Marc VDS Racing Ford GT #41 spun out into the gravel. Since it was a dangerous point the qualifying session was interrupted by a red flag after eleven and a half minutes. Consequently, Nilsson had no chance to set a good lap time and qualify for Q2.
Janak started in the qualifying race from the end of the field and had to fight understeer. During the driver change after the first half of the race Janak handed the car over in P13. Janak had problems releasing the seat belt causing the team to lose about five seconds and a place. Nilsson took over the Lamborghini. After four laps he drove over tyre debris in a fast left turn at about 200km/h (124mph), lost control and crashed into the barriers. The Swede was unhurt; the Murcielago was forced to retire.
The race on Sunday only lasted a few seconds for the team for Enge (CZE) in the Aston Martin and Karl Wendlinger (AUT) in the sister car #5 touched. Wendlinger spun and Nilsson, coming up behind him, reacted quickly trying to move out of the way. However, he crashed into the rear of the car of his team mate Karl Wendlinger. The Swiss Racing Team Lambos were not able to continue the race. Both pilots were unhurt in the crash.
Max Nilsson #6:
“The free practice session on Friday went well and I had a good feeling with the car.
We were not able to use the entire pre-qualifying session because the gearbox leaked and had to be repaired. During the session the setup of the car was fine.
Unfortunately, the engineer of my car was not there on Saturday for urgent private reasons. Therefore, my usual contact person was missing. It is not easy when your own race engineer, the most important contact person is not available.
The car oversteered massively in the qualifying session and as a result I went off the track and into the gravel. With the red and yellow phase and the oversteering car I had no chance to qualify for Q2 even though I used a new set of tyres.
We had found a good setup for the warm-up on Sunday morning and felt very confident about the race. However, my race was immediately finished due to a crash. Karl (Wendlinger) spun after touching, I came up from behind and tried to move out of the way and into the gravel in order to not hit the side of his car and injure him. At that moment Vanina Ickx in her Ford GT was on my right side in the gravel and therefore I could not avoid crashing into the rear of my team mate’s car. Both cars were severely damaged and the racing weekend was over.
It was a very unfortunate racing weekend for the entire team.”
The next racing weekend will take place in Silverstone from June 3rd to 5th.
