A Tough Nurburgring 12 Hours

It was great to be back at the Nordschleife for the 12 hours of the Nurburgring. The race would be run in two 6 hour segments, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. I joined Racing One, driving their Ferrari 488 GT3. We were greeted by rain on Saturday morning for qualifying and I went out first in very wet conditions to do a couple of flying laps - my first in a couple of years. A nice easy way to settle back into the track then..! We were immediately inside the top ten but with varying conditions over the two hours of qualifying as we cycled through the drivers, we started the race in P30.

Almost everyone started the race on slicks but as we went on the long warm up lap, the rain started coming down and we pitted along with quite a few others for intermediates. It was by now very wet at the back of the circuit although the start/finish area was relatively dry. After two laps on the intermediate, a niggling intermittent brake issue manifested itself which would plague our race. When I went back out, we changed to wets but the track had dried somewhat since I came in for the issue and we were back in to change to slicks. Unfortunately the issue struck again and we were back into the garage for a longer stop. The Racing One guys worked extremely hard to resolve the issue and the car did enough laps to remain classified pending an overnight fix.

Sunday morning was a lot brighter and the track was dry. The team treated the day as a test session and after a couple more stops the issue seemed to be resolved. There can be few better things than driving a Ferrari around the Nordschleife on a dry (mostly) sunny day. It was a tough weekend for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed working with the team and my fellow drivers - the guys never gave up and worked extremely hard to resolve the issue. I'm hoping we get another opportunity to work together so that we can show what the car is capable of.