Last weekend the eighth and final qualification round for the German Nationals was held at the fast track at MACN Nuremberg. Unfortunately I couldnâ™t take part in the EC in Gubbio so I decide to attend this race at my home track. The weather forecast didnâ™t look too good for Saturday, so there was no practice possible and we had to start directly with qualifying later in the day.
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I used my winning setup from last year and it worked perfect right from the beginning, though I struggled a little bit with engine power. This allowed Michael Heinrich (XRAY NT1) to take the lead, followed by myself within a second. In the last three rounds of qualifying on Sunday, everything went well for me and I took the TQ spot by 2.5 seconds ahead of Michael Heinrich and Patrick Nähr (also running an XRAY NT1). So we had three NT1 cars directly qualified for the finals. The rest of the field had to make their way through the semi-finals which saw a clean win from Simon Balk (XRAY) in the semi-final A. So we had four XRAYs in the final.
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There was a clean start of the front runners (myself and Michael), but there was a lot of trouble in the rest of the field in the first few laps. Patrick had to retire after only three laps. That allowed the leaders to pull away and they never looked back. Michael pushed really hard on me with his strong NT1, but without any mistakes I was able to pull away and in the end I took the win by 1.5 laps ahead of Michael and Felix Bischoff.
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Final Results:
1. Thomas GĂĽnsel XRAY NT1
2. Michael Heinrich XRAY NT1
3. Felix Bischoff
4. Nobuhiro Kanabe 5. Simon Balk XRAY NT1
6. Dominic Greiner
7. Ralf Drachsler
8. Werner Bergbauer
9. Mirco Thalheimer 10. Patrick Nähr XRAY NT1
I was really happy with the result after winning 3 weeks ago at the MSC Rötz track where I was able to set a new track record and XRAY took the top 3 places after the race.
1. Thomas GĂĽnsel XRAY NT1
2. Patrick Nähr XRAY NT1
3. Michael Heinrich XRAY NT1
Now we look forward to the German Nationals in September which are taking place at the MCC Tuerkheim track. I think the whole team will be well prepared after dominating the warm-up race on this track with Ralf Kraus in front, followed by myself and Michael Heinrich.
