Datum: 27.05.2015 · Sonstige

Finish at the 3 hours of Silverstone

Just one week after a rather frustrating Nürburgring 24 hours Pierre Ehret and his teammate Allexander Mattschull were busy to conquer the next race with their Car Collection Mercedes SLS AMG GT3. At the 3h of Silverstone, the 2nd heat of the Blancpain Endurance Series, both Mercedes pilots archived a successful finish in the Am-class. But also this race was not without obstacles on the road to the finish-line, as Pierre explained:

"The trouble started in the qualifying. After a problem with the gear selector I had to come back to the pits to fix it. The crew decided to properly eliminate the defect in the garage but this was not allowed by the sporting regulations which only allow service in the pitlane during qualifying. So all of our qualifying times were eliminated, and we had to start from the very end of the 60 car grid."

"On one hand this was a little bit annoying but regarding the fact that we had to start a 3h endurance race, the starting position was not that important and provided me a great pleasure in the opening laps. I had to drive the first stint and improved 10 overall positions in the first laps. I was able to get up to P6 of 13 starting cars in our class when I handed the car over to Alexander."  

Alexander Mattschull, who drove the 2nd stint, was even to improve to 4th in class. Even a drive though penalty for a minor pit stop violation could not spoil the chances for further improvements, so the chance for a podium were still intact when Pierre took the wheel again for the third and final stint of the race .

"I was handed the SLS on P4 and kept driving good times. But then something must have happened on the Mercedes: in the last 60% of the stint the handling got worse and the car was nearly undriveable. This costed us more positions than the penalty that was not that worse than the handling-problem."

With a final P7 in class and a 45th overall in the 60 car big grid Ehret and Mattschull equalled their result from the first round in Monza. The Car-Collection sister-car of the trio Heyer/Seyffarth/Toril finished as 29th overall and 18th in the Pro-class. The win in the gentleman-class went to the Boutsen-Ginion duo Groetz/Ojjeh starting on a BMW Z4-GT3, while the overall win went to a british car on british soil with the van Ryan Racing squad Bell/Estre/van Gisbergen winning in their McLaren 650S GT3.