Classis Endurance Racing
This is the most traditional support race of the Le Mans Series since its inception in 2004. It features sports prototypes and GT cars that raced in the World Championship and Le Mans during the 1960s and 1970s. Similarly as in Spa the race was rather interesting, especially the early stages when we had four or five cars running very closely and changing their positions lap after lap. First to disappear from this leading group was, similarly as in Spa, Jean-Marc Luco, who replaced his Porsche 936 with an older Porsche 908/4 Turbo but the results was similar - early retirement. Olivier Cazalieres in one of the two present Chevron B36s (the other mechanically damaged in practice though and not taking part in the race) lead early in the race but then lost his pace and finished forth, the last participant still in the lead lap.
After Calizares disappeared from the lead, it was Sandy Watson in an older Chevron B19 who took thw lead but LMS driver Nicolet in a pretty Lola T298 and Michel Quiniou in older Lola T280 fought very close behind. After the pitstops all three were still close together but soon after QUiniou gave up and prefered to maintain his safe thrid postion. Meanwhile Nicolet pushed very hard and in the end beaten Watson by less then a second.
Out of the 37 starters 26 cars saw the flag in the finish. Among the retirement there were several interesting cars worth to mention. Well known Sascha Maassen drove Kauhsen's Porsche 908 Coupe but he was neither quick, nor the car was reliable. One of few other 'modern' prototypes in the field was GRD from 1973 but Zurstrassen crashed it already before the first corner. With slightly damaged car he then continued for another 9 laps, continuously improving his position, but a puncture at the beginning of tenth lap meant the end for him and his nice looking car.
Most of the field consisted of closed Chevron B16s supported by a couple of B8s and various derivates of Porsche 911s. In the end we had eight Chevrons among the top 11 cars, somewhat resembling the period. Unfortunately this make disappeared a long time ago while another well supported manufacturer in CER is still active in sports car racing. Three Lolas were among the top 10. So the best make apart from Lola and Chevron, which dominated especially the under two-litre class in the early seventies was BMW M1 of Traber in the 12th position ahead of five other GTs of the period formed by two M1a and three 911s. The were also some Chevrolet Corvettes behind them and one interesting car, the NASCAR based Dodge Charger which is allowed to race here since the car raced in Le Mans 1976 despite covering only 2 laps back then. This time it was much more successful circulating on the track for entire one-hour race and classified 20th. The car looked rather gawky on this segmented track. And it was also virtually much larger, longer and heavier then traditional sports cars. While taking photos it often did not fit the room, which was quite sufficient for all sports cars :-)
ADAC GT Cup
It was nice to see another RSC-followed race during the weekend and it was national German GT Championship for GT3 cars called ADAC GT Masters. Out of 26 cars entered for the race only one car DNA. Unfortunately it was one of only two entered Ford GTs but still the 25-car field was second largest in the short championship history. Unfortunately the series is run in two heats but it did not matter for the veteral Klaus Ludwig and his co-driver Dominik Schwager, who raced as guest in a Corvette without any rights to score championship points, but with no real problems they dominated both heats. In the second race they were closely followed by Sascha Bert in another Corvette. But once he gave the car to his team-mate lesser known and very slow Alis Meir, the car almost immediately lost everything that Bert had beaten.
The attractive Ford GT was an unfortunate retirement in both races while the rest of the field consisted mainly of Corvettes, Lamborghinis and Porsches, we could have seen also three Ferraris and two Aston Martins. They were very unsuccessful in their first race, one of them spinning in the first corner before retiring completely but had a better race the second day, though eleventh place does not look well either.
Other support races
There were additional two sports car-based races. The THP Spider Cup for identical Peugeot 206 Spiders and Radical Cup where various types of this make (SR3, SR5, PR6 and SR8/SR8 LM) raced for overall and class win. The results itself weren't that important like a fact that there are more and more sports car series in the world makin gthis typ eof racing moire common and popular among young drivers. With a little attention of Racing Sports Cars team there were also several races of Formula 3 cars counted toward two different championships: ATS Formula 3 Cup and ADAC Formel Masters, which is some kind of junior version of F3 Volkswagen 200 PS engines. A goog thing of that series is that they still use an old good Can-Am point system (20-15-12-10-8-6-4-3-2-1) rather than currently common adjusted F1 style (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1), which was specially adjusted to keep Michael Schumacher from getting title year after year, so the win is much less point advantage to keep the point standings closer than it was in the past either with the Can-Am system used in sports and touring car racing or the original F1 system (9-6-4-3-2-1).
