Category: Hockenheimring

Super Duper GT3 Finals Weekend

In my sheer unending brilliance, I once claimed you can never-ever-ever have too many GT3 cars. I’m not sure when I said that. Probably somewhere in 2012 or 2013. I truly believed it at the time too, but fast forward to 2016 and I’ve come to realise it’s not entirely true. It turns out there is such a thing as too many GT3 cars – although only when the cars come spread out over three racing series over the course of one and the same weekend.

The weekend of 1-2 October is about to prove it. Due to a small blip that occurred last winter in the department of Racing Series Calendar Planning, next weekend is filled to the brim with GT3 races. Not only is there a GT Open round planned at Monza, there’s also the grand finale of the German ADAC GT Masters taking place in Hockenheim and there’s the Blancpain GT Sprint final in Barcelona. This sudden onslaught of GT3 events has caused quite a mess over the last few weeks.

You see, even though GT racing requires multiple drivers per car, the pool of available GT3 drivers isn’t as big as many might think. As a result, PRO-drivers often sign multiple contracts per season and compete in two or more GT3 series simultaneously. Many combinations are possible, but for European racers the combination of Blancpain Sprint and GT Masters is an extremely common one. So with the finals of both these series clashing over the upcoming weekend, many drivers have been forced to choose between doing either the one or the other.

Haase with teammate Parisy at Blancpain Sprint Nürburgring

Take Christopher Haase, for example. He competes with Saintéloc Racing in Blancpain Sprint and with Land Motorsport in GT Masters, but for this weekend he’s opted to race GT Masters in Hockenheim. Consequently, Saintéloc was left with an empty seat for Blancpain Sprint Barcelona and had to find a substitute racer. Which it did. In the form of Marco Bonanomi. Yes, the very same Marco Bonanomi who normally races with Aust Motorsport in GT Masters and who will now, as a direct result, miss the Hockenheim final! In order to make up for Bonanomi’s sudden disappearance, Aust has had to beg the Audi factory to send them a replacement. Which they did – they sent them Pierre Kaffer. Of course, under normal circumstances Audi would’ve sent its main spare driver Marc Basseng, but since Car Collection had already been suffering an empty seat since August when the aforementioned Haase hopped over to Land Motorsport, Basseng had already been ordered to go and help out the Car Collection crew by the time the Aust call came in and thus wasn’t available.

Am I still making sense? I hope so, because the confusion’s about to get worse.

Both the Blancpain GT and GT Masters standings are currently being led by the same driver: Christopher Mies. Since Mies isn’t an amoebe (not as far as I can tell anyway) and can’t split himself into two separate entities to fight for both titles at the same time, over the last few weeks he saw himself forced to choose which title he would like to win the most. He could play it safe by opting for Blancpain GT, where he and Enzo Ide have an 18-point lead in the title battle. Or he could go for glory by choosing GT Masters; if he and teammate De Philippi can somehow claim the title for Audi despite the GT Masters’ extremely limiting 2016 Audi BoP, that’d be a massive coup for Ingolstadt. In fairness, there’s something to be said for both options. However, no matter what he did, Mies knew he would unavoidably have to disappoint one of the teams he’s loyal to – and in the end he decided he couldn’t do that. So he put the decision in the hands of the Audi bosses, who at length decided that he should fight for glory in GT Masters.

Christopher Mies will race for Land Motorsport in Hockenheim

Audi’s decision meant that last week there were even more changes made to the GT3 driver distribution. I could tell you all about  those changes. If I wanted to, I could tell you everything I know about how WRT decided to put Robin Frijns in Mies’ empty Blancpain GT seat, how this left WRT a driver short on one of their other cars, and how they had to call on the Audi DTM squad to ask if they perhaps had any GT3-savvy drivers available for the weekend of 1-2 October.

But I don’t want to do that.

It would just make for another complicated explanation that takes up too much space on the internet and that’ll give me another ginormous headache. Instead, I’m inclined to remember the words of a man I once met in Zandvoort. He told me that the really important races shouldn’t be discussed, no matter how intriguing the factoids might seem. Instead, such races should simply be experienced. I’ve decided that that’s what I want to try and do this weekend. I want to forget about all the mix-ups and the fact that so many drivers are in the ‘wrong’ car. Instead, I just want to enjoy the action. Because I’m pretty sure it’ll be one hell of a ride.

Bring on #SuperDuperGT3FinalsWeekend

Sorry, Max. I Was Wrong!

Written in honour of Max Verstappen’s first F1 victory.

I’ve known of the existence of Max Verstappen for a very long time. When I first started watching formula 1, internet was only available via dial-up modem and very expensive. So instead of allowing me access to our costly home connection, every two weeks my father would use his office network to print out the latest articles of the only formula 1-website he knew of. The first batch of papers he ever handed me was topped by a piece titled “Verstappen becomes father for the first time”. It was illustrated with a photo of Jos, his then-wife, and baby Max Emilian, born only a few hours earlier.

As the years passed, toddler Max once made the news for breaking his wrist while playing. A few years later, word started coming out of the go-kart world that a now teenaged Max was getting good results and was building a fierce rivalry with fellow Dutchman Nyck de Vries. At the time there were many questions being asked about which of the two had the most talent. For a long time the debate went in favour of De Vries, especially when he was the first to make the switch to cars. Many at the time wondered if Max, when he too switched to cars, would still be able to catch up with the by then much more experienced De Vries.

Verstappen made his move from go-karts to cars a year later, in the winter of 2013-2014. He competed in the Florida Winter Series and then tested some Formula Renault 2.0 cars. Like most, I expected Max to sign up for one of the 2.0 series – it’s a good starting point for rookies – but instead he was announced as a Formula 3-racer for Van Amersfoort Racing. When I heard, I was certain Frits van Amersfoort had lost his mind. Who puts a practically inexperienced boy in heavy machinery like that?!

My opinion about VAR’s Verstappen project didn’t improve much upon seeing it live for the first time. When I stumbled into the Formula 3-paddock at the Hockenheimring in May 2014, it didn’t prove difficult to spot the VAR tent. In fact, it was almost impossible to miss it. It was the only tent with fifteen spectators in front of it, all dressed in orange, with Jos Verstappen-caps and Dutch flags. Grumbling I walked past the canopy. I refused to be in awe of a driver simply because of his last name. As far as I was concerned, Max would have to prove himself first.

During the first free practice, he failed to do that. I was watching from the inside of the Motodrome, from where I had a good view of how strangely Max was handling the Sachskurve. He literally took a new line every lap. So, I quickly pegged him down as a nutter. This was an opinion I stuck with even after Max had finally found his preferred line and, over the course of the weekend, began bringing his lap times down drastically. The races on Saturday and Sunday only made things worse. In the first race Max retired, in the second he broke down on his way to the grid and very clumsily parked his car at the Spitskehre, and in the third one… okay, fine, he won that one. But hey, that was probably just dumb luck. After that first weekend in Hockenheim, I saw absolutely no reason to hype up ‘this Verstappen boy’. On the way home, I even remember stating: “The kid still has an awful lot to learn and I doubt he’ll ever be as good as his father was. If he wants to prove me wrong, he’s going to have to step up his game BIG TIME.”

Well, he did.