Last weekend of March the annual LRP Touring Car Masters was held in Eppelheim, Germany. The event is well known by racers and was attended by 211 drivers this year. In the Open Stock Category, 64 drivers signed in. Everyone needed to use the LRP 13.5 X12 Stock Spec, and 2011 EFRA rules were used.
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On Friday we had four rounds of controlled practice to make a new group reseeding for qualifying on Saturday. The best 3 following laps were counted. After practice, Eric Dankel was dominating followed by XRAY teammate Steffen Leinburger and Martin Hofer.
Top 10 after 4 rounds of practice: 1. Dankel Eric XRAY T3'11
2. Leinburger Steffen XRAY T3'11
3. Hofer Martin 4. Wahl Tim XRAY T3'11
5. Wohlgemuth Daniel 6. Hagnauer Philipp XRAY T3'11
7. Madsen Carsten 8. Kaufmann Marco XRAY T3'11
9. Kruse Martin
10. Piperato Alex
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On Saturday we had five rounds of Qualifying. Four of the rounds were won clearly by Eric Dankel and his XRAY T3 2011, 2nd place went to Daniel Wohlgemuth, and 3rd went to Tim Wahl (XRAY). Other XRAY drivers also did a great job, so we had six drivers in the A-main, which usually had 12 drivers. The 12th position would be the winner from B-Main which had the chance to bump up into the A-Main.
Top 12 for A-Main: 1. Dankel Eric DE XRAY T3'11
2. Wohlgemuth Daniel 3. Wahl Tim DE XRAY T3'11
4. Hofer Martin DE 5. Ehrhardt Fabian DE XRAY T3'11
6. Tobias Wiebach 7. Kaufmann Marco DE XRAY T3'11
8. Derin Özgür DE 9. Nähr Patrick DE XRAY T3'11
10. Hagnauer Philipp DE XRAY T3'11
11. Hilbert Moritz DE
12. Christian Merteke (B main winner)
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On Sunday afternoon the A-main started. With three dominating and clear wins, Eric Dankel secured the No. 1 Spot on the podium for XRAY. Behind him there was tough competition for the last two podium spots, but finally 2nd place went to Daniel Wohlgemtuh and 3rd to Martin Hofer. Unfortunately, no other XRAY drivers could join the podium as they were a bit unlucky during the A-mains. But with a total of 6 cars XRAY was the strongest manufacturer and also showed good teamwork during the race.
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Final Results:
1. Dankel Eric DE XRAY T3'11
2. Wohlgemuth DE
3. Hofer Martin DE 4. Ehrhardt Fabian DE XRAY T3'11
5. Kaufmann Marco DE XRAY T3'11
6. Hilbert Moritz DE
7. Derin Ă–zgĂĽr DE 8. Hagnauer Philipp DE XRAY T3'11
9. Christian Merteke DE
10. Tobias Wiebach DE 11. Wahl Tim DE XRAY T3'11
12. Nähr Patrick DE XRAY T3'11
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Race report by Alex Hagberg
The LRP TCM was as always the big ending of the indoor carpet season in Europe. This year saw a very strong field of drivers, and probably was the most competitive indoor race of the season. I felt well prepared for the race; after having used the LRP CPX control tires many times before, I knew that I had a good basic set-up for this event. The event this year saw a very technical carpet layout with a narrow infield which made driving tricky and set-up difficult too since one had to compromise steering to make the car easy to drive in the fast direction changes through the infield.
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As we have seen so many times before, qualifying was basically dominated by Ronald Völker. I came close to beating him in Q2 (only 0.0004sec behind) but this was as close as I would get during the whole weekend. Throughout qualifying I tried some set-up changes which at first made the car better, but at some point made it worse. The car definitely was at its best in Q5 where I decided to put in the front gear diff. Unfortunately I finished 0.3sec short of the 2nd place finish, which meant that I would qualify 4th and not 2nd place overall. This would of course drastically change things for the finals and my chances to have a victory or podium finish were reduced. The last few races in touring car have been incredibly close both in qualifying and finals and at some point I have been very unlucky with those few tenths of a second.
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In the finals I had a very good car. It was fast and reactive with good steering from the start in all finals, but I had to drive patiently behind Juho and Marc to avoid a crash. In the first final I played it safe and finished 3rd overall after an early mistake from Marc. In the second final I was driving behind Juho and after about 1 minute he missed his line going through the infield and thus I tried to pass on the inside. As we came together I was set back a little, which resulted in a crash with the cars coming from behind. I had to settle for 8th in that final. In the third final I was again fighting for the top 3 spots. As Juho eventually made a mistake, I would fight with Marc for 2nd place. We had a close battle which endured until the very last lap, and Rheinard came out ahead. I clearly had the faster car but again could not make a pass so I finished 3rd, which gave me the much-unwanted 4th place overall.
