The ADAC GT Masters has now completed three test sessions and two free practice sessions at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. And if you ask around in the paddock, one brand is always the favorite for the second race weekend of the season: BMW.
Lamborghini driver Mick Wishofer even made it clear at the press conference on Friday: “The BMW will drive on pole tomorrow!” The new M4 GT3 seems to be doing even better than the previous M6 GT3 compared to the competition.
“The high speed balance is quite similar to that of the M6. The top speed also seems very good. Also, we gained so much in the slow corners. The [Kurven-]Rotation of the M4 is on a different level,” enthuses Schubert driver Jesse Krohn after the best time of the day on Friday in an interview with “Motorsport-Total.com”.
“We have a very strong package and we took what we learned at Oschersleben with us.” The brand new GT3 car with the sweeping dimensions scores with its turbo engine, especially in the first sector. There, the two Schubert Motorsport M4s drove low 22s in the first free practice session.
The entire competition was given two to three tenths of a second in this section alone. But Krohn doesn’t want to know anything about the role of favourite, especially since the opponents are catching up again in the other sections: “I don’t think we’re ahead of the other guys. We have our strength in the first sector, while the others in sector 2 look good.”
McLaren is probably BMW’s closest pursuer
“The others will be close tomorrow. We won’t outrun anyone,” he says. And Audi driver Christopher Haase is not giving up hope either. “Everyone can be beaten, so they shouldn’t celebrate too soon,” emphasizes the Land Motorsport driver.
Who is BMW’s closest pursuer? Haase replies without hesitation: “I rate the McLaren very highly.” This coincides with other voices from the paddock. Krohn also has the guest entrants from JP-Motorsport on the bill: “McLaren looks fast, but Audi is always good too. They’re all really competitive.”
Christian Klien is surprised by the role that he and Dennis Lind have pushed the McLaren into. “The McLaren doesn’t fly on the straights like people wrongly assumed,” Klien said. “Our strongest sector is sector 2. If you look closely, you’ll see that we’re there on the straight, but we’re not flying away.”
In fact, the McLaren was three tenths of a second behind the BMW in FT1, where the faster lap times were achieved. In contrast, the McLaren 720S GT3 was ahead of the BMW M4 GT3 in the middle section of the Red Bull Ring with its flowing corners. “The McLaren is basically a car that prefers routes that are very fluid,” said Klien.
Secret favorite Audi in Spielberg?
“What he doesn’t like is stop-and-go, like in Zolder for example.” Or the first section in Spielberg. The Audi R8 LMS GT3 evo II, which Krohn has on the bill, also suffers here. If the Ingolstadt faction wants to tear something, everything has to fit together. Just like the second fastest of the day, Dries Vanthoor. Or last year at Rutronik Racing.
Back then, Dennis Marschall clinched pole on Sunday and then drove home second place together with Kim-Luis Schramm. “The Red Bull Ring will never be an Audi circuit,” Haase is certain. “But we’ve seen in the past that if you really nail everything, you can also be on pole with the Audi.”
Will Audi be able to clinch its first GT Masters victory at Spielberg this time? Mercedes-AMG has never won in Styria either. ZVO Racing’s Fabian Schiller has little hope of being able to do anything about it this time. This is also due to how Friday went for him and his teammate Jules Gounon.
“Not the parade route of the Mercedes-AMG”
“It is well known that this is not the parade route for Mercedes-AMG. But this route is also part of the calendar and we have to exploit our potential as much as possible,” says Schiller. “The start didn’t go as planned. We have a few problems and we’re a bit behind the competition and the other Mercedes.”
Porsche, on the other hand, has already won in Spielberg, but Christian Engelhart and Ayhancan Güven, as the best 911 duo, only finished fifth and twelfth. “It’s very difficult to assess. We should wait and see where we stand in qualifying,” said Engelhart.
After all, the set-up fits: “So far, things have mostly looked different in qualifying at the weekends [als am Freitag]. So I wouldn’t worry too much about it now. We have a great balance and the car rotates very nicely. There seems to be a lack of speed on the straights, but it’s hard to tell from the outside if that’s really true.”