Round 5 of the FIA GT1 World Championship 2011 will take place at the 5.89km (3.66 miles) long Silverstone Circuit next weekend. Competing with two Lamborghinis Murcielago LP 670 R-SV in this championship, Swiss Racing Team will not be able to participate in the event; the cars and the team will stay at home.
After all, at the last race at the Sachsenring in Germany both cars of the Swiss team were involved in a crash shortly after the start on Sunday. Karl Wendlinger (AUT) in Lamborghini #5 spun after being touched by an Aston Martin. His team mate, Swede Max Nilsson in the sister car #6, came up from behind and moved out of the way into the gravel. However, he was pushed back on the track by another car and could not avoid the Austrian who had ended up sideways on the track. Both cars crashed and were heavily damaged.
Shortly after the crash it was clear that repairing both cars until the Silverstone race would be a race against the clock.The team with support from Reiter Engineering tried until the very last moment to get the cars repaired. However, today the decision had to be made that the Murcielagos will not travel to Great Britain because it is not possible to get them ready for the race
Othmar Welti, team principal:
“At the Sachsenring we already had the suspicion that it would be difficult to be able to start in Silverstone despite the hard work by the Reiter Engineering team and our mechanics. The actual damage was a lot worse than suspected. Now we are certain that we will be missing one race. That is very frustrating! It was just impossible to repair the cars in time.However, we look forward now and we will use the time to bring our cars into perfect shape for the race in Spain in July.”
Erich Kolb, team manager:
“It was not an easy decision. It is a real bummer for the mechanics who have been working tirelessly and have been doing a lot of nightshifts since the Sachsenring race in order to repair the cars. And now there is no reward because we will not be able to race.”
Source : Swiss Racing Team