Preview: iRacing NEC Round 3
Florian Volk and Benjamin Fischer achieved the best NEC season result for Fischer Motorsport to date in the second championship round in early May.
This Sunday, the Grebenhain, Germany and Leipzig, Germany native want to continue this positive trend.
Things are pointing toward a bit of a restart for the sister No. 85 BMW team, after Y. Hignet and Fischer Motorsport announced following the most recent NEC race, that they will go separate ways going forward.
On Wednesday, the team announced Niclas Pedersen from Denmark has been signed for the remainder of the NEC season, to team up with Pascal Theis in the No. 85 BMW.
The 25-year-old does bring along experience in GT- and sprint racing and has impressed the team during tests prior to the third championship round.
For Theis, who will make his 14th career NEC start on Sunday, it’s a fresh beginning after a rather mixed start to the season thus far.
“We had our share of problems in the first two races, but that doesn’t matter now. What matters, is what’s ahead of us.”, said Theis.
“I’m really excited, to be honest. I can’t wait to see what we can achieve on Sunday. Niclas has done a great job getting settled with the team and has done a great job so far. Also, we’ve completely revisited our car setup and really made some big improvements there, so we should be in a good position.”
“The Nürburgring is of course really special. I’m just happy to have the opportunity to run with a great team like this. My main focus right now is to just finish the race, make no mistakes and to gather experience. Everything else is bonus.”, said Pedersen.
As an additional premiere for Fischer Motorsport this season, the team will enter a third car, a Porsche Cayman 718 GT4 in Sunday’s race, to be piloted by Tobias Abel and Marko Zelenika.
Abel, who was forced to miss the first two NEC championship rounds because of school exams, is excited about returning to the “Green Hell”.
“Oh yeah, for sure it’s great to be back. The Cayman is totally new for me, obviously and a big change for me after driving the Audi RS 3 last year. But new challenges mean growth, as they say.”, said the 18-year-old.
Marko Zelenika is making his series debut with Fischer Motorsport and shares in with a lot of anxious excitement.
“I’m very much looking forward to the race. Like for Tobias, the car is totally new to me. So I’m really just focused on avoiding mistakes and to finish the race. I think that would be a success.”, said the 30-year-old from Zagreb.
Sunday will mark the first time for Fischer Motorsport, to enter a GT4 class car since the 2020 NEC season finale.
Race start for Round 3 of the iRacing NEC will be Sunday 15:40 CEST / 9:40 am EDT.