June was an eventful month for Nico Verdonck. First, he completed the third heat in the ADAC GT Masters Championship and, in addition, the second race in the Blancpain Endurance Series was scheduled to be held. With a podium in the ADAC GT Masters, in second place no less, Nico and his team – German Lambda Racing – and their Ford GT achieved their best result this early on in the season. Second place, a result that was achieved after an excellent race by both Nico Verdonck and his teammate Jesse Krohn.
“This is a marvellous result! I am extremely happy that we were able to accomplish this with the Ford. The testing day in Spa-Francorchamps helped all of us to get ahead and it goes to show how important these testing days are! Unfortunately, we weren’t able to book a good result in the second race after the engine started to misfire. And so we wisely parked the car in the garage!”, so says Nico. After taking an honourable second place they moved up in the rankings. Nico Verdonck and Jesse Krohn now hold a fine seventh place overall in the Lamda Ford GT.
Whereas they weren’t able to make much progress in the Blancpain Endurance Series, things got better in Paul Ricard. Despite the fact that the McLaren MP4 12C in Boutsen-Ginion-ALD colours was having trouble keeping up with the fast pace, the British Beauty can still look forward to a marvellous future. Although they drove a ‘0′ score in Silverstone, after experiencing some technical problems, it was proved that after a storm comes a calm after all.
“Finally this was going to be our weekend. We knew that despite the vast amount of test kilometres we would need to adjust to the new circumstances (it was 32 degrees and beautifully sunny) and we lost time doing so. We tried a few set-ups and showed up with a good car at the start of the qualifications”, Nico continues.
The qualifications were extremely difficult, in part due to the large number of participants (54). And the fact that the Ferraris were extremely fast also didn’t exactly help the ‘orange McLaren’. However, Nico was able to park the British racing car in an honourable twelfth place making him the best representative for McLaren.
“The race went really well! Early on, I was able to move up from P12 to fourth place because the car was that good. Unfortunately, a bad crash happened that through our plans out of gear. We finished a little late and my teammates were rattled so we lost some ground!”
Nevertheless, this was the perfect rehearsal for the 24H at Spa at the end of this month. With our twelfth place, we can be proud of ourselves and our team. I believe we are ready for the mythical 24H!” Nico is eagerly looking forward to the best of Belgium!
Source : Nico Verdonck