Le Mans Series

Positive result for Kruse-Schiller at Monza

© Planetlemans - Gabriel Portos

A 6th place in the LMP2 class and a 13th place in the overall LMS score was a first reward for the hard work done in the last 2 month by the only German privateer sports car team in the LMS. The Team from Siegburg with it’s drivers Jean de Pourtales and Hideki Noda had a trouble-free race, in which the fight for positions in each class was fierce. Despite some minor problems during the practice the Lola Mazda ran like clockwork.

A little bit of a hectic rush came up when shortly before the car was about to take its grid position a faulty gearbox sensor had to be changed, meaning that Jean de Pourtales had to start the car from the pit lane on last position. Newly hired race engineer Johannes Gruber was able to improve the setup of the car step by step over the weekend; some more technical changes should lead to another increase in performance in the next race in Spa Franchorchamps. Other highlights of the weekend were a 5th place in the warm up session and a 6th overall place in the “Michelin Energy Endurance Challenge” for the car with the best fuel consumption. There is now little time left until the start of the 1000 km in Spa Franchorchamps, which is besides the 1000 km Nürburgring the team’s 2nd home race of the season, the Belgian race track is just about 80 miles away from the team’s workshop in Siegburg near Cologne.

Hideki Noda: „It’s good that we have scored our first championship points after all the work and the short time for preparation. Although we had some minor issues during the practice sessions the team has put a quick and reliable package together for me and Jean, the pit stops were very good, I’d like to say thank you to the team for this. I couldn’t reach 100% performance in my triple stint because my seat started to move having some effect on my left feet and the braking … I hope we can maintain this performance in Spa and probably catch up even more.”

Jean de Pourtales: „That was a hard piece of work! I had some good fights during my 4 stints but also some critical moments when overtaking the slower GT cars. The Mazda engine played a decisive role to achieve a result on this high speed race track in Monza, our tops speeds were very good. The same applies to the set up; we are really on track now. The handling of the car in both Lesmo curves was excellent and it was fun to be able to stick to the Audis and Peugeots right there. It was really fun today and I’m optimistic that we can improve further.”

Hardy Schiller: „We were already a little bit in doubt concerning some issues so we all felt relieved after this race. The team, including Jean and Hideki showed a strong performance. With the short time for preparation, the confirmation of our participation just on 12th February, getting over the car from the United States and the modifications at the Lola factory to install the new engine I think we did a good job for such a short time and I’m proud of it. We have to keep going to score a similar result at Spa.”

Kai Kruse: “Despite a little misunderstanding concerning the pit stop strategy which lost us approx. 20 seconds and the fact that we had to start out of the pit lane our race was very good. I’d like thank our partners Mazda, Lola, AER and Dunlop for their support. Another big thank you goes to the team which did some wonderful pit stops today and to our new engineer who really made big steps forward concerning our structure and the set up. It has become obvious that the LMP2 group has become a 2-class society, with the current performance we would have scored a 2nd place in last years race. Now there are Porsche teams in LMP2 which spent at least a 3-4 times higher budget, which is even more than some LMP1 teams do. This is a development which really concerns me as I think that this is against the spirit of the reglement which outlines the LMP2 as a class for privateers.”

(Kruse-Schiller Motorsport)