Once again, Nico Verdonck made his mark in the all but last race of the Blancpain Endurance championship. The resident from Brussels finished in tenth place during the championship on the Nürburgring in Germany. Not a bad achievement considering the fact that the car had to start in 38th position after a tyre exploded during the qualifications.
“It certainly was unfortunate that a tyre had to explode exactly during that crucial phase in the qualifications. This doesn’t happen very often, but when it does you just have to accept it. I brought the car back to the box, but the damage was too extensive to complete another fast round. We concentrated on getting the car ready for the race. As a result, we had to start in 38th position”, Nico commented after the qualifications.
The race started with Seija Ara behind the wheel of the #5 Boutsen Ginion Racing Team, in the colours of ALD-Automotive. The Japanese who excelled in 2005 by winning the 24H of Le Mans, was impressed by the magnitude of the starting field (50 cars). After a good strategy with a first safety-car situation, the Scot Franchetti left in 19th position. Despite all of his experience he was only able to move up 1 place and Nico left in 18th position.
“I had expected to be allowed to start closer to the top 10!,” Nico laughed. “P18 was a decent starting position but the gap was just too big. Luckily the car was tuned properly and I was still able to end in 10th place and secure points for the third time. The only thing that bothered me was the lack of speed on board of the McLaren MP4-12c. This is a problem that we would like to have solved before Navarra.” With just one more race to go, which will be held in Navarra in Spain in 2 weeks, the chances for a first win are finally in sight. You can actually feel the progression and everything is finally falling into place.
Disappointing end to ADAC GT Masters!
The ADAC GT Masters ended with a race on the Hockenheimring during the last weekend of September. What seemed like a promising start turned out to be a real nightmare for Nic and his team Lamda Racing. His team mate Krohn was involved in a major crash so that the team had to pack up on Friday.
“Nevertheless, we were still very competitive during the first trainings. Even during the qualifications we ended as one of the fastest in sixth position. Unfortunately, that’s were everything went wrong and we had to throw in the towel. A very disappointing end to our first campaign in the ADAC GT Masters. Hopefully all the hard work we put in during this season will pay off next year”, Nico comments.
With one more race to go in the Blancpain Endurance Series – as mentioned earlier – and an additional race scheduled for next weekend at Zandvoort during the Dutch GT4 together with the Mathol Racing Aston-Martin Vantage GT4, the last weeks of the season will continue to be busy ones for Nico.
Source : Nico Verdonck