Nürburgring Endurance Championship

Misery continues on for Theis, Bell

by Fischer Motorsport PR

July 26, 2020 07:48 PM CET 688 Views

The No. 85 Porsche Cayman GT4 team entered the weekend with much hope for the NEC Round 6. After the disappointment of two consecutive DNF, Pascal Theis and Julian Bell were looking to turn things around. However, things came different than hoped and instead, the team saw another chapter added to its misery with yet another crash and failure to see the checkered flag.

For the first time in the ongoing season, the team decided to have Julian Bell in the car for Qualifying and the start of the race. The Canadian placed a fastest lap of 8:40.462 in Qualifying, well enough for tenth placec on the starting grid.

At the start of the race, Bell did not gain positions, but didn't lose any, either. For the most part, a very civil start saw no crash in turn one.

But it did not take long for the first dramatic scene to unfold. Running directly in front of Bell, two GT4 cars touched at Kallenhardt and spun off the track. Bell seized the opportunity and pulled ahead to take over eighth position.

"We didn't necessarily have the best pace out there, today. But I saw that the guys ahead of us were way over the limit what they could handle and they were crazy aggressive. I expected the whole time, that they would crash. And that's what happened.", Bell commented on the scene.

On lap seven Bell made a mistake of his own, touching the barriers lightly in his No. 85 Porsche Cayman GT4, handing some damage to the car. As a consequence, the team decided to repair the car as best as possible on its first pit stop of the day.

Theis took over the car for his stint and quickly picked up positions, while having to battle his way through the entire TCR class field that was battling hard for positions.

"I had so much traffic in that stint, it was crazy. I think there wasn't a single free lap in there. That wasn't exactly easy and I think we lost some time. But overall I was pretty happy with it, how the slower class cars raced us. It's part of it.", Theis said.

Everything started to look like the team was on its way to get a top ten finish again until two laps before finishing his stint, Theis made a driver error and went off right at Galgenkopf, to touch the curbs. Overcorrecting the mistake, the car now suddenly steered hard to the left and crashed into the barriers.

The impact was hard enough to completely destroy the Porsche Cayman GT4 and the team was once again faced with the decision to retire from the race.

"That one was my bad. Two laps earlier, I had a contact with a GT3 at Hatzenbach. He spun me off the track. Just before that, I had just finished passing all these TCR, so that was super frustrating. I kind of lost my focus after that.", explained Theis.

"I'm terribly sorry for the team. It's been rough going for us lately. I think the summer break comes at a perfect time for us. Hopefully we can finally get back to better runs after that."

The next round of the iRacing Nürburgring Endurance Championship takes place on August 23rd. After six of nine championship rounds, the No. 85 Porschr Cayman GT4 team holds sixth place in the GT4 class point standings.