The second round of the Porsche Sprint Challenge Central Europe took place at the Salzburgring in the Austrian Alps. The classical and challenging circuit is situated closely to the home base of series organizer Lechner Racing and provided a great stage for drivers and teams to present their skills to all supporters and fans.
The event was also further enhanced by “Cars and Coffee.“ Everybody had the chance to enjoy the offerings of different food trucks while watching the first part of the 24 hours of Le Mans in a nice atmosphere. Other opportunities in the support programme were race taxi rides, simulator runs, or getting special T-shirts printed in the paddock… All in all – a great success for provider Porsche Austria.
On the sporting side, after an intense day of testing on Friday under sunny skies, weather conditions changed on Saturday. In two very windy races, but despite deep-hanging dark clouds and still dry qualifyings, Eduardas Klepikas from Lithuania set pole position for both sprint races, followed by German Herbert Geiss and Franz Dziwok from Poland in qualy 1, with Swiss driver Peter Brunner being fastest in the AM class in P4 overall. For race two, Ulrich Ziegler from Germany made it to the first row of the grid beside Klepikas, with Beat Ganz from Switzerland in P3 and Czech Peter Brecka in P5 overall best of the AM class.
But due to a rule infringement of Team Dream 2 Drive, which refuelled Kleplikas car in the pit-lane between the two qualifyings, the Lithuanian, who had been promoted to ProAM after his strong performance at round 1 at the Red Bull Ring, received a 3-place grid penalty for race one.
So Herbert Geiss, now on pole, was able to immediately take the lead at the start ahead of his Pro Racing teammate Franz Dziwok, while Klepikas had to make his way up to the top again. Back on P3 again, already in the first lap, he later also managed to pass Dziwok and put a lot of pressure on Geiss. But the German was able to resist and defend his position, and he finally crossed the finish line just 0.3 seconds ahead of Kleptikas, with Dziwok coming home in P3. Peter Brunner from Switzerland, 4th overall, claimed victory in the AM category after a strong fight with Brecka and was very happy about his performance: “I really found a good rhythm from the very beginning and could make good use of my strong grid position.”
Klepikas then won the second Sprint race with a great advantage of nearly ten seconds ahead of German Ulrich Ziegler, even if he did not have the best of all starts and lost a bit of ground in the beginning. But he quickly took the lead again from Ziegler and continuously pulled away from the field. First race winner Geiss came home third this time, while victory in the AM category went to Peter Brecka from the Czech Republic.
The Endurance race, which saw all ten cars present, then turned out quite eventful, also due to the always threatening rain finally coming in and causing a Red Flag with about 13 minutes to go in the first half, to allow for the whole field to come into the pits to change for rain tyres. After the re-start after two laps behind the Safety Car, Ulrich Ziegler in car 69 finally finished on top, ahead of Geiss and Klepikas.
After the driver changes, Dziwok in car 69, who later had to retire, could not keep up with the pace, so Geiss soon took the lead ahead of Tauras Tunyla, who had taken over car from Klepikas. Then a crash between Karel Neffe in car 85, AM class leader at the time, and Beat Ganz in car 80, still fighting for an overall podium finish, caused a longer Safety Car period. Neffe had slid into Ganz under breaking on the wet track, both cars had to be removed and the track cleared from gravel.
Finally, Geiss, who now also leads both the Sprint and the Endurance championships, was able to celebrate his second win of the day just ahead of the pairing of Eduardas Klepikas and Tauras Tunyla. Andrew Kunitsa and Ivan Peklin (Czech Republic/Ukraine) finished in P3, while Peter Brunner won the AM class on a very successful weekend for the Swiss driver. Victory in the Team championship again went to Pro Racing.
The next round of the PSCCE will take place at Tor Poznan, Poland, on July 5 and 6.