FIA GT Championship

Bad luck again at Adria for PK Carsport

© PK Carsport

2008 seems to be a rather difficult year for the ambitious driver pairing Kumpen-Longin. After the bad luck in the Belgian GT Championship and the difficult start in the FIA GT, Kumpen and Longin were confident to put down a strong performance in Adria, the third round of the FIA GT Championship. But things turned out in a different way when Kumpen was hit out after only 11 laps and had to retire.

The beginning of the weekend was rather positive. “Indeed”, confirms Bert Longin. “We were tenth and sixth in both free practice sessions and that was a decent result after the difficulties in Silverstone and Monza. We wanted to do even better in qualifying and that’s why we slightly changed the set-up of the car, as we suffered little oversteer during both free sessions. But after all it wasn’t a good decision. The car was now far more difficult to drive, being very much understeer… Finally we qualified in 12th position, a disappointment after all…”

For the race the team decided to use the set-up of the free practice. Anthony Kumpen took a good start and after only five laps he came through in 9th position. “The car behaved very well and after only a few laps, I was setting down the same lap times as the frontrunners. It felt like a relief. All the hard work seemed to pay off and we were on the right way… Until a Vitaphone Maserati hit me out, leaving me behind with a broken suspension. The driver was already pushing for a few laps and he made a mistake I guess. He will even receive a punishment, but will not make our day anymore.

Our race did only last for 11 laps… Of course we are all very disappointed, as we really believed to put down a strong performance here in Adria. This is like a nightmare for the boys of the team, the sponsors and all the fans. But let’s try to be positive, we’re sure that our car is able to perform well and we’ll try to prove this in Oschersleben in two weeks time.”
PK Carsport will now prepare for the next race in Oschersleben, Germany in two weeks time. Oschersleben will be the first race of a series, with the summer highlight in Spa during the classic Spa 24 Hours.