NEC Round 8 roller coaster ends with podium for Porsche Cayman GT4

Things got off to a rough start for the team at first, as Theis started out seventh but fell back to ninth place before losing control at the track section of Brünnchen and dropping even further back to second last place.

“That was about as bad a start as we possibly could have had. Man, I was furious, I’m telling you. But the team did a great job keeping me calm and focused over the radio.”, Theis commented on the early, hectic stages of the race.

Once Theis regained his full focus, things started clicking and the Frankfurt, Germany native caught back up with the field during the first stint. Along the way to reclaim a spot in the top-five, the team also benefited from a number of crashes involving other teams in the GT4 class.

Then it was Bell taking over from Theis for his middle stint in the race. The Canadian exited the pits in fifth position, but through a display of stellar driving and clean consistency picked up two positions to bring the No. 85 Porsche Cayman GT4 all the way up to third place, while there were some more crashes in the GT4 class field.

Just as things started to look bright and positive for the team, emotions took another turn for Bell in the car and the team as whole as the 35-year old made contact with the barriers, just enough to skew the steering of the car and making a repair stop necessary, three laps earlier than planned.

The shift in strategy resulting from the unplanned stop dropped the team to fifth position. The team decided to complete its final driver change at the same time and put Theis back in the car.

Pushing hard on the out lap and the lap after, to make up for the time lost and to attempt to make the undercut work, Theis stayed in front by just 1.5 seconds after all teams had cycled through their pit stops, to take over P4.

Now the team’s focus shifted on the final stretch of the race, engaging in hard position battles when Theis experienced a “code brown moment” at the Stefan-Bellof-S downhill section, almost losing control, but just barely keeping it together, riding the car on the very limit.

With just over 30 minutes remaining, the team’s sister car, the No. 84 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup of Benjamin Fischer passed Theis on the exit of Mutkurve. Two seconds later Fischer crashed into a Mazda MX-5 that stood on the racing line at Klostertal and Theis narrowly missed the incident, almost getting collected in it as well.

“I have no idea how I got through that one. It was crazy. I saw nothing, suddenly the 84 crashed into a Mazda, that I didn’t even see. And somehow we got through it unharmed. I have no idea how. It scared the hell out of me, to be honest.”, the 26-year old commented.

After settling down following the big scare that took out the team’s sister car, Theis moved closer to the Porsche Cayman GT4 in front, battling for third place and at Döttering Höhe, the Fischer Motorsport machine eventually completed the pass to take over third place with three laps to go.

The position battle came to an abrupt end when the fourth place car directly behind was hit by a GT3 class car shortly before the end, thus robbing the team and fans of what could have been a thrilling last lap battle for the podium.

By finishing in third place, the team earns its best result since NEC Round 3 in May and jumps to fourth place in the official GT4 class standings with one championship round remaining.

The NEC season finale takes place on November 1st.