IVRA ClubSport Series

Hignet & Theis go from back to seventh at Barber

by Fischer Motorsport PR

December 12, 2020 10:05 PM CET 655 Views

Y. Hignet started off from the rear of the grid and Pascal Theis completed a clean double stint in Saturday’s Round 3 of the IVRA ClubSport Series at Barber Motorsports Park, en route to a seventh-place finish for the No. 85 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup. The team’s sister car No. 84 Porsche failed to see the checkered flag after a spectacular crash just after the halfway mark.

Hignet qualified the No. 85 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup in P18, but quickly gained ground on the start as the field worked its way through the first few turns. By lap 13 the Frenchman had worked his way all the way up to ninth position.

On lap 23 the team made its driver swap stop as the lone full course caution period of the day came interrupted the race. Hignet entered pit lane with teammate Benjamin Fischer in the No. 84 Porsche several positions behind.

Fischer started the race from P19 on the grid, directly behind Hignet. But unlike Hignet, Fischer struggled to find competitive pace and was unable to keep up with the CUP class field.

As the two cars came down pit road, Hignet handed the car over to teammate Pascal Theis, while Fischer saw Manuel Mayer take over the car.

The No. 84 Porsche team completed its pit stop slightly faster and so it was Mayer ahead of Theis on the restart, holding the competition at bay.

Only a few laps later Mayer defended his position against a hard charging Lucas Lippert in the No. 22 H2-Performance SRT Porsche and lost control in turn eight. As Mayer slid through the grass, the Fischer Motorsport machine came back onto the racing surface in turn nine, directly in front of Lippert.

Lap 41: After losing control in turn eight, Mayer gets t-boned by the No. 22 Porsche of Lucas Lippert (H2-Performance SRT) and flips over

Mayer’s car was t-boned hard and flipped over. The crash left the car completely destroyed and the best news was that Mayer escaped from the accident unhurt.

En route to their seventh place finish, their second consecutive top ten result in the IVRA ClubSport Series, Theis and the No. 85 Porsche team had overcome one more scary moment on lap 83.

With just about 14 minutes remaining in the race, Theis was holding ninth position going into turn 14, the difficult to navigate second-to-last right hand corner on the track.

Directly ahead, Theis suddenly was startled to see the spun-out car of Fuga SimSport’s Jeffrey Garzotto. Just as Theis was about to navigate his way past the stopped car of Garzotto, the No. 2 Porsche driver accelerated back into the racing line and only through a miracle and fanastic reflexes by Theis, a collision could be avoided.

In the end, Theis picked up two more positions in the final minutes of the race to bring home the seventh-place finish, moving the No. 85 Porsche into tenth place in the unofficial CUP class point standings.

“I think this was the maximum for us today.”, Theis said after the race.

“Y. did a hell of a job. Man oh man. He was flying out there. That was incredible. We had a good car, but it was not easy today. We struggled with understeer changing into sudden oversteer. And the curbs were deadly.”

“But we did really well, as a team. I’m just glad I was able to avoid the No. 2 car there shortly before the end. That almost was game over for us right there.”, Theis finished out his race review.

After completing the final race of the 2020 calendar, Fischer Motorsport will not yet travel back to Germany, but instead to Florida, where it will attend test days for the iRacing 24 Hours of Daytona coming up on January 23, 2021.

Unofficial Race Results - CUP Class