2022 NLS(Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie) Round 3 Report

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Having held the 2022 season’s opening round on March 26th, Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie (NLS) had to postpone its second meeting, originally planned for April 4th, to the early November date because of a severe cold wave. So they had a weather-related difficulty for the second consecutive year, as last year’s season opener was also canceled due to snowfall.

But the third round was held as scheduled on April 23rd, as the de facto second meeting of the year after a bit longer interval.

The 90-minute qualifying session got underway at 8:30 a.m., and all three BMW M4 GT3s run by Walkenhorst Motorsport performed very well. While there was no concern about snow on this late April date, it was pretty chilly, and the sky was overcast in the morning. According to the Yokohama Tire’s thermometer, the air temperature was in the single-digits, nine degrees centigrade, and the track surface temp was around ten degrees when the session started.

Probably because of the conditions, many on-track incidents happened, which caused yellow flags and the speed limits all over the place. As a result, completing a clean lap became a difficult task for everybody, but Sami-Matti Trogen, behind the wheel of Walkenhorst’s no.34 car, set 7’58″773, which was good enough to secure the third grid. The gap with the fastest car, 1.678 seconds, was extremely close if you consider that the track is more than 25km long. And Ben Tuck in the no.35 car got the fifth grid by clocking 8’00″824 on his qualifying attempt.

The teams were busy after that because the reconnaissance laps would begin at 11:00 a.m., just one hour later from the end of the qualifying. Although, the race wouldn’t start until noon. Plus, there were some welcoming events, like the pit walk or the grid walk. So they had to complete all preparation works needed for the race within a very tight time frame.

The starting drivers of the Walkenhorst team were Christian Krognes in the car no.34 and Tuck in the no.35. There were some sunshine rays, and the air/track temperatures rose to 14/17 degrees. Still, the cars needed proper tire warm-up during the formation lap to make ideal starts.

Among the trio of BMW M4 GT3s at the front, Krognes managed to overtake the no.44 car and gain a position at the exit of Turn 1 after making an excellent start. Then, he had to give way to a Porsche, which started from the fourth grid, but the no.34 car completed the opening lap in third.

While trying to move up the field, the no.35 car was involved in an accident with another car and forced to retire on Lap 3. The race’s early part was quite eventful, and there were many yellow flags and marshal cars everywhere on the track, which caused unusually heavy traffic in some places. So it was an unlucky way to end the race for the no.35 crew.

The no.34 car did its first pit stop and resumed racing with Andy Soucek at the wheel just before the one-hour mark. While the top two stayed out, the other three cars that the Walkenhorst crew was directly fighting with made their stops at almost the same timing.

The team planned to race with four 60-minute stints, so the no.34 car came into the pit again when about two hours had passed, around the halfway point of the four-hour race. At that time, the car was running in second, and the race leader, BMW M4 GT3 with car number 99, also visited its pit. The no.34 car went out to the track with Trogen in the driving seat.

Even in the second half of the race, a number of accidents occurred on the track. But the no.34 car went on safely and made its third and final stop with about one hour to go. Krognes slipped in the car again for the last stint. And when an Aston Martin, which was running in third, steered to the pit lane with 20 minutes remaining, the no.34 car automatically moved up to the third place, the position in which they finished the race. Thus, the crew filled the last slot on the podium. It was a promising and encouraging result, considering that the qualifying race of Nürburgring 24-hour was only two weeks away.

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