Disaster strikes for No. 84 Porsche in NEC Round 8
Celebrating his birthday this weekend, Manuel Mayer opted to wait for his turn in the car until the halfway mark and so it was long-time team mate Benjamin Fischer instead, who qualified and started the car.
Fischer laid down a lap time of 8:09.024, which was good enough for P4 on the grid, easily making for Fischer’s best lap time around the VLN layout of the Nürburgring Nordschleife, ever.
“I’m pretty happy with that lap. To be quite honest, I didn’t expect that, not being the best of qualifier. But the track was super quick today. Hopefully we can make use of being near the front.”
The opening lap showed tremendously close racing in the CUP class field, as is so typical for this series. The Leipzig, Germany driver was able to hang on and keep it in fourth position, but eventually moved into third place just a few laps later.
On lap nine, shortly after the team’s first pit stop of the day, there was contact with another CUP class competitor while battling for third place, coming through the Bilstein bridge section at Döttinger Höhe, that forced the team to make an extra quick stop to check for damage.
But Fischer went back out on track, now running in sixth position, determined to make up the time lost. And the strategy to take only two tires, started to pay off as the 36-year old quickly kept creeping close to fifth place. After making the pass, Fischer was now focused on getting back to fourth.
Closing the gap from originally over 45 seconds down to only 13 seconds, Fischer brought the car back in for its next stop and first driver change.
Now it was birthday kid Mayer’s time to take over the steering wheel and the Teisendorf, Germany native managed to keep the car in fourth position, with P3 pitting one lap later.
“I had so much fun today, in the car. I couldn’t imagine doing anything better on my birthday. Plus, I didn’t have to buy the beer today, for our little after-race get-together.”, Mayer laughed.
Mayer completed a single stint and then Fischer took over, looking complete another single stint to finish out the race. However, on lap 24 with just over 30 minutes remaining in the race and holding third place, a slower class car crashed at Klostertal and caused a massive incident.
Fischer approached the corner, saw the yellow flags too late and crashed into the Mazda MX-5 car that stood on the racing line, completely destroying both cars.
“I had no chance to react. The yellow flag came up like two seconds before the crash. I had nowhere to go and couldn’t slow down enough to miss the car. That one hurt pretty bad. It’s such a shame. We had the car and strategy to get that podium finish today.”, a visibly dejected and shaken up Fischer said after arriving back at the pits.
After Fischer recovered a bit from the incident, the team still celebrated Mayer’s birthday and enjoyed a nice evening, before leaving the race track, hoping that the team’s final appearance in the series this year, in the season finale on November 1st will go better.
Despite its eighth place DNF, the No. 84 Porsche team still sits in third place in the official CUP class standings, having a decent shot to close out the season in the top three for the first time.