The 40th. 24hours at the Nürburgring ended for Pierre Ehret as desired. At sunday afternoon the Audi R8 LMS ultra #25 of the Audi Race experience crossed the finish-line as 17.th overall and 13th in the GT3/SP9-class. This was the expected result for the quartett of Pierre Ehret, Christian Bollrath, Peter Vann and 3 times Le Mans winner Marco Werner who wanted to archieve a Top-20 finish at the 24h-classic. With a constant drive the squad ended the race as 4th best Audi. This was remarkable as Audi won this 40th edition for ist first time as a doublewin with the teams of Phoenix-Racing and Mamerow-Racing, a team that also cooperated with the Audi Race experience.

Theoretically even a better result was in reach as Pierre Ehret explained: „My colleage Christian Bollrath had an encounter with the Alzen Ford-GT with just 90min into the race – resulting in a tire damage which forced us to limp home with minimum speed over half the track. Together with the repair and a later trip in the gravel we lost 20min in total which is at least 2 laps. So we even could have finished 12th. After the damage we resumed as 98th in the 169 car field but climbed up the order without any trouble then. There were no further damages, also due to our perfectly working crew. At night we were even faster as at daytime due to the possibility to use softer tires.

It was really fun and I would really like to come back to this unique track, if I had the chance. Im my first stints I started with a lot of respect for this track but after experiencing all variables during the race – dry track, wet track, day & night – I feel very comfortable with the Nordschleife. Also my laptimes improved constantly. As I may have to leave out one of my WEC-races another race at the VLN might be an alternative. But the details for this still have to be negotiated.

In summary I must say it was the best decision to choose the Audi Race experience for my race. The team cared exemplary well for us Nordschleife-Rookies and the cars were extremly well prepared, considering that the R8 ultras were very new for the team. With Marco Werner we had an instructor who was 2nd to none. I can only recommend the team for every pilot who wants to complete a successful crashcourse on the Nordschleife and is looking for the best professional team for this.”

Source : Pierre Ehret