Friday on the Ring
11. July 2008Nürburgring - Traditionally on the Ring there is already a lot of action on Thursday – VIP and press drivings as well as sponsor drivings, plus an additional free practice. Theoretically, the pilots could have been practicing on the track for hours on end, under most favourable external conditions. In the early evening – hardly noticed by anybody – there was the shooting of some film scenes in the pitlane, featuring Nick Heidfeld, where the popular Formula 1 pilot talked about bicycling. But today it got serious, and instantly it started drizzling. So everybody was prepared for an exciting timed practice where it wouldn’t be determined after only 3 laps who would be the winner. And indeed the order of the drivers changed constantly. In the end Markus Bösiger (Buggyra-Freightliner), with a lap time of 2:00.428 minutes and an advantage of more than 1 second, secured pole position ahead of MAN pilot Antonio Albacete and Markus Altenstrasser (Renault). Bösiger’s team mate David Vrsecky, who is currently leading the overall ranking, had returned to the pit a bit too early; apparently he had not expected that the track would dry off a bit more – and as a consequence lost one position in the final lap. And also Altenstrasser’s team boss Frankie Vojtesik managed to pass some of his opponents and secured finally 5th position, whereas Jochen Hahn and Jean-Philipp Belloc who were among the front runners at the beginning, dropped back even behind Chris Levett (all of them MAN) and were now 7th and 8th resp. on the grid. After the evaluation of the speed records four drivers, including Altenstrasser and Vojtisek, were disqualified due to overspeeding – more than 160 km/h.
In the evening the first contest took place: Go-and-Stop of the race drivers. In a gripping final FIA pilot Mikael Johansson on his Hauber-Scania got the better of local hero Heinz-Werner Lenz (Iveco). On third was „Rainbow-Warrior“ Cees Zandbergen (Scania). Curt Göransson, several-time champion in the eighties, who happened to come by, was delighted for his young Swedish fellow-countryman about the latter’s victory.
