IVRA Endurance Series

Opportunity lost for Manning, Fischer at Phillip Island

by Fischer Motorsport PR

November 8, 2020 03:10 AM CET 703 Views

After earning pole position for the 4 Hours of Phillip Island, things fell apart for the No. 385 Porsche team late in the race, after a pit speed penalty and a crash involving Nathan Manning, as the team looked back on a missed opportunity.

Benjamin Fischer posted the fastest lap in Qualifying of any GT AM car on the grid with a fastest lap of 1:24.583 in the Fischer Motorsport Porsche 991 RSR GTE.

The Leipzig, Germany driver took on his first starting driver duty of the season and was able to keep the GT AM field at bay for the first half of the race, despite a flurry of full course yellows.

With a total of seven, there was an unusually high number of safety car periods in the race, but Fischer kept a cool head and navigated through the scary traffic of the restarts a number of times to keep the car in the lead of the GT AM class, pulling a double stint duty on one set of tires.

“IVRA set a limit of three sets of tires for this race. So we wanted to save our tires for the second half of the race, to give us an advantage there, in case there was a late-race restart that bunches the field together.”, Fischer explained the team’s strategy.

As another caution period interrupted the racing action shortly after the halfway mark of the four-hour event, Fischer came down pit lane and the team completed its lone driver change of the day. Nathan Manning from Chicago, Illinois took over from Fischer to take the team to the finish.

Manning received four fresh tires and a full load of fuel, as he exited the pits. The team made its driver swap stop one cycle later than most of the other GT AM teams and thus found itself running in ninth position after the pit stop under yellow.

But Manning quickly picked up positions following the restart and soon after put the car back in the top-five in GT AM, as the No. 385 Porsche 991 RSR GTE was one of the fastest cars in the class in Saturday’s event.

“Oh man, that car was a blast to drive today. We had such an awesome car. I felt this was our best car of the year, by far. Which is making it all the more heartbreaking we missed out on this opportunity.”, Manning said.

Manning was referring to the team’s final scheduled pit stop with about one hour remaining in the race. In a moment of mental lapse, Manning accidentally disabled the pit speed limiter as he was exiting his pit stall and consequently picked up a pit speed penalty that dropped the team to the very tail end of the pacing line and P11 in the GT AM class.

On the restart, Manning tried his best to attack and work his way back to the front, but passing at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit is extremely difficult and thus the 32-year old was only able to get back to ninth place when disaster struck the team.

A LMP2 prototype attempted to pass Manning and two other GTE cars directly in front, through one corner, missed the braking point and caused a huge wreck that Manning was unable to avoid. Getting hit by approaching traffic from behind, the Fischer Motorsport No. 385 Porsche was badly damaged.

In the end, following a long repair stop, the team ended up getting scored in ninth place unofficially.

After the team’s third place finish at Spa last month, unofficial GT AM point standings list the team in sixth place now, 52 points out of first.

The next IVRA Endurance Series race takes place at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama on December 13th.

Unofficial Race Results - GT AM