C.E.R. - Nurburgring 2009

The Ace card takes all

The fourth practice in the championship on the Classic Endurance Racing, occurred on 21 and 22 August on the circuit on Nürburgring, has offered the spectators the chance to see a real jewel: in the paddock, among the 55 entered cars there was a car which made a fine display: it was Howmet TX, designed by Bob McKee and powered with a turbine supplied by the Continental Aviation & Engineering, the only one car having a turbine engine in the motoring history which was able to win a race.

On track, the three test sessions, all ran on the day of Friday, have seen Caron only, in the Chevron B21, being able to keep up with a wild Luco and even to take him away pole for only one tenth of second. All the others, starting from Brunn with Sauber C5, suffered from a gap of more than two seconds.

During the race the Swiss immediately showed a rate which was unreachable by his rivals: he got rid of Caron during the first lap; then he took advantage of the struggle among the drivers behind him to pass them, up to obtain a good margin of safety, increased at the mid-race thanks to the Safety-car intervention on track, due to the oil poured out on the Mercedes Arena by the BMW M1 driven by Traber. Wilkins/Catlow too, having same strategy as Luco, took advantage of the situation to gain the second position steadily, but their success vanished after two laps only from the finish because of the oil pump trouble. Quiniou was second, after a race ran all in to attack, followed by Lafargue with the Lola T298 BMW.

Among the P1 cars Corentine Quiniou ran a good race, second placed behind usual and unreachable Sheldon, while in the GT1 it was Nahum who dominated in the Ford Gt40, but his main competitor, who was at the wheel of the twin car, had his engine broken at six rounds from the finish. Finally, in GT2 there was the great performance of the Porsche cars driven by Bullitt and Roitmayer that, after getting times close to the P2s, were also able to gain the best fifth and seventh places.

Marco Zanello

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