1.07.11 An almost perfect 24 hour race

For the 39th time, the 24 hour race was held on the Nürburgring this past weekend.

Wolfgang Kaufmann

Porsche Kremer Racing

Flying Piranha

Alongside a number of factory teams from the German automobile industry, Cologne's successful privateer team Kremer Racing took the start with two Porsches. Wolfgang Kaufmann, the professional racing driver from Molsberg, shared the 997 GT3 KR in the SP7 class with Daniel Schrey, Dirk Lessmeister and Adam Osieka.

In qualifying, the team narrowly missed out on getting one of the special blue lamps in the windscreen that signify the fastest 36 cars to signify the lapped competitors that a faster vehicle is approaching. For the number 52 Porsche the two qualifying sessions added up to position 38 on the grid. „The Porsche was perfectly prepared and we would surely have got up to the top 30 in qualifying. I was simply a little unlucky in the dense traffic of over 200 cars, and lost many seconds there.“

For the start of the race on Saturday, in difficult and changeable weather conditions, the team and starting driver Daniel Schrey decided to put on rain tires. It proved to be the wrong choice, as the majority of the field found out. The drying track required a switch to slicks after two laps already. In the overall standings, that set the team back to 64th position at the end of the first hour.

After Daniel Schrey, Wolfgang Kaufmann was next to take the wheel of number 52, he did a double stint and moved the car up to 27th place overall and 3rd in class. „With the tire choice, we had a 50:50 chance; and this time we were wrong. However, the Porsche ran absolutely reliably, without the smallest technical problems, and a top 20 place was our for the taking.“

Dirk Lessmeister proved to be less lucky, as he exited the Grand Prix track at the beginning of his first stint and damaged the Porsche's right rear quarter. The experienced and competitive Kremer crew fixed all body damage and sent the car back out; the quartet held its position in the top 30 until the tenth hour of the race. That was when further damage from the collision began to make itself felt, and the Porsche disappeared in the garage for two hours to have suspension damage fixed and the driveshaft swapped. The Kremer Racing Porsche dropped all the way to 93th position overall.

As hard as it is, that's racing. When we learned about the accidents that had happened on track during the night, we were glad to still be in the race in the morning; and we made up ground all the way to the finish“, Kaufmann said after the race. In the end, the Kremer Porsche got to 51th place in the overall standings, and it was a double finish for Porsche Kremer Racing!

„Eberhard Baunach and his team, our tire partner Yokohama and all partners involved in our assault on the 24 Hours have done an excellent job!

See you in 2012 at the 40th edition of the Nürburgring 24 Hour race, and the 50th anniversary of Porsche Kremer Racing!“