2010 Nurburgring 24-hour – Chris Harris update 5...

“SECOND QUALIFYING FROM CHRIS HARRIS”

(14 May 2010) 

What a fantastic session. I'm normally a bit bah-humbug about qualifying for 24hr races (it really doesn't matter that much) but this was by far the best I've seen here.

The fastest 15 cars were allowed out first to give them a clear track, and Marc Lieb promptly nailed an 8.30 with several wet bits on the track.

At the same time our nominated quickie, Roland Asch managed a 9.15 in the RS, which left us all looking like feeding guppies, because we thought 9.20 was pretty much the limit.

He did two laps, Patrick Simon then jumped in to get a little more time in the car, and then we parked it. This is an attritional race, and unless you really have to run the car in the test and quali sessions, it's best to just park it and then resist the temptation to consume kilos of the Haribos that litter the Manthey garage.

At this stage, we were 32nd quickest and Richard Meaden's Aston V12 was running 42nd. There wasn't much time between the two cars, and it looked like we might hold a small grid advantage for tomorrow's race.

Oliver Matthai had other ideas though. With exceptional speed and irony, he nailed a 9.11 in the closing stages and pushed Meaden&Co up to a very solid 37th. We stayed-put and will start 42nd, which is a cracking result from a street car.

At the sharp end, all was quiet until the final 15mins - at which point the Manthey 8.30 still stood unchallenged - and then everything went went beserk. The Audis clearly weren't finished and the upshot was an 8.24.7 from the Mattias Ekstrom car, with the following three positions all taken by R8s.

The Haribo Manthey GT3 R came an excellent 5th, and the main Manthey GT3 R didn't run again, leaving it 7th.

The improbably rapid GT3 R Hybrid came ninth, behind the only BMW M3 GT2 to make the top-ten. Everyone expected them to blitz the place today, so their pace is a real surprise.

To summarise, this is all great news because:

The Audis look like they might be able to run-and-hide, but Olaf Manthey said afterwards "Let's see where we all are on Sunday." Which is ominous, given he's won the last four 24hr races. And his beard is a bit scary.

And on both a personal and EVO note, it looks like me and Dickie are now in a proper scrap this weekend. We've both deliberately avoided highlighting any potential rivalry because the cars we're driving have quite different philosophies.

But now we're here, there's less than 4sec between us and I'm seeing a very interesting tussle developing. Let's just hope that both cars make it into Sunday afternoon for a proper ding-dong.

Enough foreplay, I want to race now...

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