5.04.12 Successful start to an anniversary season

"I have the great pleasure to be contesting the full VLN endurance championship season as well as the Nürburgring 24h race with Porsche Kremer Racing in their 50th anniversary racing season. Our start to such an important year, with a 2nd place, makes us want more", Wolfgang Kaufman is satisfied with his first race of the year on the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Porsche Kremer Racing 997 GT3 KR

Porsche Kremer Racing 997 GT3 KR

The legendary Porsche team from Cologne is celebrating its 50th year in motor racing in 2012. Fittingly, the Porsche 997 KR for Wolfgang Kaufmann and his team mates carries the number 50.

In changeable "Eifel weather" conditions during qualifying, the team decided to concentrate on its preparations for the race: "At one time we were 5th in the overall standings, eventually we held the 37th place on the grid."

Kaufmann, the professional racer from Molsberg, was at the wheel of the Porsche at the start, and was happy with the way his stint had gone: "Both the car and the Yokohama tyres performed wonderfully well, we made good progress. It was too bad that the fog that is so typical for the Eifel set in just after I had handed the car over to my team mate."

A less than lucky choice of tyres, with a change to Intermediates, stopped the teams progress; when the race was called for heavy fog around the Nürburgring Nordschleife, they were in 22nd place overall, and 2nd place in the SP7 class for GT cars with a displacement of up to 4000cc.

Alongside its outings with the Porsche, the team from Cologne and its driver Wolfgang Kaufmann will also take part in selected rounds of the Youngtimer Trophy with a Ford Escort BDA. Also on the schedule is another start at the Oldtimer Grand Prix with a Porsche 935 K3 prepared by Porsche Kremer Racing.

"Such old racecars hold a special attraction for a driver", the driver form the Westerwald says about this time travel to the past, "electronics and aerodynamics in today's sense of the word are almost non-existent on them. The few laps I have been able to turn on the Nürburgring Grand Prix track with a Porsche 962 were also impressive. You can feel the history these cars have."

There are no news on possible races in the World Endurance Championship with an LMP2 prototype: "We may start at the 1000km of Spa-Francorchamps but nothing has been decided yet." Wolfgang Kaufmann's next race will be in the 37th DMV 4-Stunden-Rennen (Nürburgring-Nordschleife) on April 14.