GT1 World

GT1 Nürburgring: Heavy rain stops Pre Qualifying

© Planetlemans – Marcel ten Caat

Just before the Pre Qualifying session was due to start a rain shower passed the track and the GT1 cars were off on a wet track. The track started to dry rapidly though and when the teams felt the wet weather tires were less useful most teams came in and the track turned quiet for a while with only a few cars circulating.

As Tomas Enge posted a 2:11 it was clear that improvements were only possible on slick tires, but with a limited number of tires available for the weekend several teams elected to wait until the track was really dry to go out again.

At 16:50, forty minutes into the session, all cars had slicks mounted and went out again in order to improve their lap times. The lap times quickly dropped to around the 2 minute mark and eventually it was the Young Driver AMR number 7 of Darren Turner and Tomas Enge that went fastest in 1:59.220. Exactly three tenths of a second behind it was the Marc VDS Racing Team Ford GT of Maxime Martin and Bas Leinders, while the Swiss Racing Team Nissan GT-R was third quickest.

Dark clouds appeared on the horizon again though and at 17:10 the rain returned, heavier than it was before. As it was pouring down there were several reports of standing water at the track and the race director could do nothing more than showing the red flag to end the session. It would not be restarted anymore and soon after a thick fog started to cover the track.