Team of the Week - PROsport Racing
If there was an award for “Team of the week”, then that would have to go to the PROsport Racing team whose Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 crews absolutely dominated the latest round of the ADAC GT4 Germany Series as well as two of their other Aston’s doing equally well at the latest round of the NLS from the Nordschliefe.
Full season entries of course for the ADAC GT4 Germany Series saw their Junior Class #24 car of Hugo Sasse and Mike David-Ortmann run with their Trophy Class crew of Yevgen Sokolovskiy and Christopher Rohner as last weekend’s third round of the season at the Dutch coastal circuit of Zandvoort.
There, the #24 car made a clean sweep of overall pole positions of each of the weekend’s one-hour races but then followed that up with two overall victories despite all the full course cautions and weather that the circuit and the series could throw at them.
That in turn was backed up by the #48 crew taking P3 and then P2 in their own Trophy class thanks to their P25 and P19 race finishes respectively.
These results have taken Sasse and Ortmann up to second in the overall Championship table behind that of the Dorr Motorsport AMR crew of Indy Dontjie and Phil Dorr but also to the top of the Junior Class for Sasse and up to second in the Team’s Championship table – again behind the Dorr Team. Sokolovskiy also moves up to third in his Trophy Class as the series moves onto their local circuit at the Nurburgring in early August.
Also running this weekend was another of the team’s AMR Vantage GT4’s as well as their Vantage GT3 which were running again within the Nurburgring Langstrecken Series (ex VLN Series) from the infamous Nurburgring Nordschleife.
Having taken something of the sabbatical for the ADAC Total 24H race at the end of May, the third round of the NLS was again ran over four hours with the team’s ‘resident’ driver coach, Nico Verdonck who again joined Maxime Dumarey and Jean Glorieux aboard their #17 SP9 Pro-Am entry to end their Saturday race day P4 in class with their #176 Vantage GT4 car Guido Dumarey and GT4 newcomer Emil Heyerdahl finishing P3 I their SP10 class.
Like many European based GT4 teams these days, PROsport Racing move across to Italy for next weekend’s third round of the GT4 European Series from Misano with their two-car entry, again involving Sasse, Ortmann and Verdonck.
Photo credits – ADAC GT4 / NLS / Teams
Aston Martin success mixed amongst the carnage of the ADAC GT4 Germanys visit to Austria
Having kicked off in Oschersleben a month ago with four podiums across the overall, Junior and Trophy classes, the seven AMR Vantage crews from the Doer Motorsport, Prosport Racing and Racing One teams again all looked to harness the performances of last time out for the undulating circuit of the Red Bull Ring.
Again, it was the four entries from the Doer Team who set the early pace ahead of Saturday’s opening hour long race with the #007 car of Ben Dorr and Romain Leroux claiming a P3 start just ahead of their #95 car of Nico Hantke (with Simon Connor Primm) and the #69 car of Indy Dontjie (with Phil Dorr) in P6 and P7 respectively. The two Prosport Racing cars would again compete in both the Junior and Trophy class with the #24 car of Mike David Ortmann (with Hugo Sasse) starting from P9 after the double podium event from Oschersleben whilst Christopher Rohner and Yevgen Sokolovskiy looked for their firs Trophy Class podium with their #48 car with their P28 starting slot.
Tom Wood and Euan McKay qualified lower down than otherwise expected in P14 for the #6 Racing One crew after they so very nearly won the last race overall, being only pipped to that P1 honour on the very last lap of Oschersleben last time out. Brothers Sandro and Juliano Holzem completed the AMR entry with their #97 Doer Motorsport car that would start P21.
Good starts from the Astons to the front of the grid saw Leroux hang on to P3 overall for all of his stint as a mistake from Hantke saw him go off track and drop well done the order as a result with damage to his car.
Cycling through the midway pits stops, and it was the Prosport team who blinked first bringing in their #24 from P7 ahead of the others in the hope of finding track position for Sasse but quickly followed by the rest.
For Sundays second race of the weekend, it was the #95 of Connor Primm who stole the headlines by claiming overall pole position ahead of the #007 car in P3 and the #6 Racing One car of McKay in P6 as the Dorr brothers ended the round 1-2 in the overall championship standings with their respective co-drivers.
This time a clean start and opening laps of the second race saw Connor Primm maintain his lead from the chasing pack just before a sizeable accident for the sister #97 car brought out the Safety Car for the first time in race 2. Then in P21, side to side contact from a KTM Cross Bow spun Sandro Holzem hard into the armco barrier on the inside to T1 to rip off a front wheel and cause further and extensive damage to their car. Thankfully the driver was OK and walked away from the wreck.
Ten minutes was lost to that incident but on the restart and it was just two corners later that the Safety Car was required again – this time for a stranded Mercedes on track having lost power after the climb to the top of the hill.
Restart number two and this time a mistake from Connor Primm surrendered his race lead as he dropped to P3 after a mistake going into the final corner and up to P2 for #007 as a result just before the pit stop window opened.
Pit stops over and an error from the #48 PROsport crew saw them visit the penalty box for the first time for undercutting pits top minimum time whilst the #007 had dropped to P3 and the #69 and #6 cars held P7 and P8 respectively.
Trouble would again visit the AMR camp as damage to the #95 car saw Hantke drop out of contention early into his sting before the #24 Prosport car was unceremoniously punted out of the race by a spinning Porsche going into T1 – was the #24 actually the cause of this having pushed the #22 car wide at the final corner is up for debate but the result was that both cars were out.
Further trouble due to damage was to befall the #007 car of Leroux who (unseen) had also damaged his cars radiators to lose power and eventually the engine with fifteen minutes still to go. Unfortunately for the race, this period then descended into near chaos as incident after incident brought out the Safety Car again as cars kept hitting each other or went off track and into the gravel.
As a result of this, the #69 Doer car of Phil Dorr and Indy Dontjie all moved up the order and claimed a warranted P2 overall whilst the #6 car of Tom Wood made up for his race 1 mistake to come home P3 as well. The #48 Prosport was the only other Aston Martin finisher in that race!!
A great race, great venue – just a little too much contact and damage!!
Photo credits – Teams / Series
