As you probably know, the Salzburg United team took part in the GT Masters 2013 race last weekend. It was a join effort of Grenzlandslot and SCFS, with Alfredo and Martin Habermann as drivers. The experience was great and we had a lot of fun, but also a considerable amount of work and pressure from Friday until the last lap. I managed to prepare 2 full cars so that we had the option to choose the best. Actually this was the hardest decision that we had to take on Saturday morning. Both cars were competitive but we knew that not enough to be even on the top 3. However, we were not that far from the top group and we were sure that we could do a good race.
On Friday, the training was quite OK. I finished the cars on Thursday late night and first rollout was at Forstern on Friday. Our surprise was that the the job was done well and we were from the beginning not far from the good times. So, we started the afternoon with a 7.6 / 7.5 times and we knew that we had to improve because the pace was around 7.0 even down to 6.9, so we had some work to do. We put all of our efforts to improve the cars, try different things and thanks to the experience and good advices from Martin, we managed to go down in the first approach to 7.1, however, of course, not enough! After some further testing and try few things with suspension and other small changes, Martin managed to go down to 6.9, but then other drivers even went down to 6.8... however, we were happy enough, but the question was, what should be the car for the race? We came back to the hotel around 2 AM and after a short briefing, I said to Martin, man, tomorrow morning you tell me the car we should race with and we finish it up.
Saturday! early in the morning at the track and Martin said, lets go with the Audi (the other option was the Porsche). We finished a second pair of racing tires in the last minute and setup the car for the race. I was pretty concentrated on my job and the car was ready for inspection. We did not have any problem with the technical verification and we were ready for racing! for me, personally, this was already a success, a car ready to be somewhere in the middle of the group and running pretty smooth. After that, it was a matter of racing
:- Qualifying: Martin did a P8, without pushing too much I guess and we were in a group that by timing we could even jump to P5 or P6.
- Race 1: we started on the second group and Martin did a P6 overall, great result and driving! the car was fast and not too far even from P5, so we got promoted to the first group.
- Race 2: Alfredo was driving and as always, a bit (much) nervous, so we drop to P8 after 6 drop outs of the track. However, we were at the pace.
- Race 3: Martin, again, great job and the car was keeping the pace. We found those teams we had to race with and Martin moved us again to P6, incredible driving! and we knew that the final race was going to be hard and very tight with Rudi's team and Franz-Wilke team.
- Race 4 and final: Alfredo has a big responsibility to keep the P6, 2 teams for sure were going to do our race very difficult and we saw it in the second group. Then it was my turn in the final first group and virtually I was racing with the other teams from the second group. I kept concentrated and I knew I had to push a lot to keep the place. The other 5 teams were simply too fast and I knew that the race was for P6. I pushed like never ever but of course I drop out 4 times overall, so... finally we did not manage it. The difference after almost 1000 laps, 0.05 of a lap to P7 that was Franz-Wilke, 0.70 to P6 that was Rudi's family. All 3 teams on the same lap, one drop less and easy a P6.
Anyway, the result was great and we are very happy of what we achieved, considering that building 2 cars in less than 2 weeks and have them ready to race was a big challenge. Martin is a super driver and he pushed the car to the right level. I was just in my usual pace with my usual mistakes, but anyway very very happy.
The day was really nice, very nice people, good atmosphere, great food and a lot of racing!
Next steps, I will take part on the GT Series by Forstern next year, if someone wants to join, I have 2 cars. I may plan to change from Scaleauto to GFK body to be able to fight for the top 3, but still with Scaleauto bodies, we can fight to be on the top 6 or so with some extra work in suspensions. There is also the final long distance race for GT by end of March that of course I also would like to join.
So... this is the report of the race. Unfortunately in English, sorry, if I try to write the same in German could take me another week
I hope you guys understand and somehow, slot is getting very international in the latest days. At Forstern, several nationalities and 3 languages around all the time (German, English and Spanish... great!)See you in the GT, great experience, highly recommended, racing to the highest level.
Cheers and keep pushing!
Alfredo
