No. 84 Porsche scores top ten at Road America

Fischer Motorsport started off its third official season in the IVRA ClubSport Series by qualifying both cars in P9 and P11 respectively. Both cars had not been among the fastest in official practice sessions, but instead the focus shifted on competitive race pace instead.

The race start was smooth and both Fischer Motorsport picked up a couple of positions and went on to open the race running behind each other with Pascal Theis leading the way.

Mayer and Theis engaged in a position battle for a couple of laps before technical problems suddenly slowed Theis down and forced him to come to the pits.

The No. 85 Porsche team worked feverishly on fixing the issue and was able to do so, but when Theis went back out on the racetrack, the team had fallen behind by a full lap.

“It was just bad luck today. We had a technical problem. I lost power when I was running behind Manuel in the 84. I was able to go back to the pits, but it took us a while to get it fixed so we fell a lap back. It’s just one of those things.”, Theis commented.

“I felt like we had a great car, but we just weren’t able to recover from that. It’s a shame for the team, because we’ve really worked hard preparing for this race.”

Mayer went on to pick up a couple of more positions before coming to the pits for the first scheduled pit stop on the day. Just as the 32-year old entered the pit stall, the first full course yellow of the day came out. The team quickly completed the pit stop and rushed to exit pit lane before the safety car would approach the front stretch, when a problem occurred.

“We couldn’t get the left rear tire changed. It just wouldn’t come off and we had to make a split-second decision to go ahead taking only three tires.”, explained Fischer.

“The problem is, that the left rear tire is the one abused the most, by far, at this track. This really made the car a handful to drive for Manuel in his second stint. I’ve got to give him props for holding on and keeping it steady for us.”

Mayer was able to keep it steady, but struggled to keep up with the pace of the top-five cars in the CUP class as the balance of the car was hindered by the missing fresh rubber on the left rear wheel.

After the race restarted Mayer dropped back a couple of positions, but was able to keep the No. 84 Porsche from falling back further, which put the team in position to still fight on for a good finish.

The No. 85 Porsche team used the full course caution to make its driver swap. Y. Hignet took over from Pascal Theis as the team was running in P17 one lap down.

For the Frenchman, things took a turn for the worse when he locked up the rear brakes into turn six following the restart in an effort to avoid a slower class car heading into the narrow corner.

Hignet lost control and plowed into the left side concrete wall before getting hit hard by a BMW M4 driver that was unable to react in time. The incident damaged the No. 85 Porsche badly, but Hignet was able to go on to finish the race for the team. However, by the time the race ended the team found itself down by three laps.

With just under 50 minutes remaining and before hitting the 100-minute drive time threshold, Manuel Mayer steered the No. 84 Porsche onto pit road and the team completed its driver swap.

A little bit off on pace overall compared to the leaders, the team decided to gamble on another late race full course yellow and put on four fresh tires when Fischer went out on the racetrack. The call cost the team short term, dropping back a few positions and to the tail end of the lead lap.

But with just under 30 minutes remaining in the race, the gamble paid off and another full-course yellow flag came out. Running on fresh tires and with plenty of fuel to make it to the end, Fischer stayed out and rallied to catch the end of the pacing line under yellow.

As the race went back to green the Leipzig, Germany driver held his own and went on to bring home the sixth-place finish, capping off a solid opening round for the No. 84 Porsche team in its third season.

“I think that was all we could expect today. We just didn’t have the pace we needed to compete with the top teams this weekend. But we knew we had a solid setup that we could use to keep us in the mix so long we just stay out of trouble. We did a great job of that today. It’s a great points day for us, something we can build on for sure.”, Fischer said happy and relieved after the race.

Round 2 of the 2020-21 IVRA ClubSport Series takes place at COTA in Austin, Texas on November 21st.