Nurburgring 24hrs Quali race dissapointment

Nurburgring 24hrs Qualifying race 2021

David lined up in the return of the Walkenhorst #101 car as the defending 2019 Nurburgring 24hr Qualifying race winner, joined only by Ben Tuck this weekend as Christian Krognes was restricted from traveling to Germany from his home in Norway. This would mean plenty of track time for the British pair over the weekend utilising the full N24hr layout which bypasses the Mercedes arena on the GP circuit and then utilises the rest of the full Grand Prix circuit to form the 25km 24hr circuit.

“Saturday was a fun day. We threw so many new tyres at the car to really try and get a good feel for the top qualifying shootout. There weren’t so many cars for this race as well meaning that we had much freer laps which was nice to get into a good rhythm with the track and car, and was good prep for the top20 shootout which I was really looking forward to driving!”

After the Free Practice and Qualifying was completed on the Saturday the car would be P5 overall from the 30+ GT3 starters and the 100+ starters of the race. Sunday would compromise of the top20 shootout, 2 empty laps for GT3 cars only to set the grid for the 6hr race, followed almost immediately by the start of the 6hr race.

“I was disappointed by the result from qualifying, I felt that the lap was pretty solid, but I didn’t expect to be that far off the pace which I was disappointed with. The track was a lot warmer than the day before, but other than that it didn’t feel that far off”

David would start the race P22, however towards the end of his first stint a gearbox issue started to develop meaning that additional pitstops had to be made to fix the issue, and as a result the #101 car was out of the competitive running and treated the rest of the race as a test ready for the N24hrs.

“It was a shame that the race ended the way that it did for us. We were in quite a solid position after a good start, however this issue really put us out of contention. It happened early and the Walkenhorst boys managed to fix the issue meaning we could still get meaningful tracktime but that’s the only positive to pull from the result, I hope we now have all our issues out the way before the big one!”

Check out David’s race VLOG below: