NLS7 – 6hr

NLS7 - 6hr

After a long summer break, racing returned to the Nordschleife for the blue ribbon NLS championship race of the year, the ROWE 6hrs.

David would pair up again with regular team mates and previous race winners, Christian Krognes and Ben Tuck. Development to the Yokohama tyres continued on the Friday with each driver racking up milage and giving feedback on Yokohamas latest specification tyre as the development never stops.

A cool and crisp morning would greet the drivers on Saturday with morning dew making the track slippery. Even though waiting for almost all the session for the track to dry, the cool conditions meant it took a long time restricting the driving order to only David to drive the car.

“Even though I am very comfortable in pushing the limits of slicks in the wet, I really didn’t want to risk the car too much in Q knowing we had a 6hr race later that day. Therefore I only managed to qualify the car P10 and quite a long way off pole, so I was a bit disappointed, however the car was fast in the dry and we had a long race ahead so knew we could make up the time and be competitive”

David then proceeded to make the start of the year, passing 9cars on the first lap to cross the timing line in P2! However this was the only highlight of the race as after crossing the line to start lap2, David suffered a puncture meaning a trip to the pits on the GP circuit and the car dropped 2mins off the leader. Undeterred, David set off to try and make a top 3 or a top5 result happen, only for another puncture on his outlap to really put paid to the teams chances of any decent result.

“Lap1 was mega, we’ve turned one of our weaknesses into a strength now and I was able to maximise the first lap to go onto the Nordschleife in P3 before drafting past Estre for P2 before the end of the lap. After that everything fell apart which was a great shame as we were well and truly in the hot seat to make a good result”