CoRe SimRacing To Finish 3rd In Team Championship!
The DMSB SimRacing Championship Sprint Series is a leading simracing series in Germany and the only one officially recognized by the DMSB (Deutsche Motor Sport Bund e.V.). Consisting of six races, each one of them is comprising a hyper sprint and a main race. Carl Winkler, Maik Paluch and Ronald Großmann competed in this series forming a CoRe SimRacing squad in parallel of the still on-going ADAC DSRC Endurance Series. After 6 rounds, Carl finished in 4th with Maik in 8th and Ronald in P30 to end the series with two of CoRe’s entries in the Top-10. The team championship missed out a P2 by 7 points – a solid P3 was the team’s end result overall.
Decided the run in the Audi R8 GT3 once again by Carl & Maik and with Ronald in the AMG GT3, the series started off in Austria at the Red Bull Ring where Carl was able to set the first points for the team in the hyper sprint race finishing in P5. In the main race both CoRe drivers of Maik and Carl ended the season opener in P4 and P7 to set a first tone towards a good result for the team championship. The upward momentum was kept in place after a podium result in COTA’s hyper sprint race was achieved which then was followed by another good Top-10 result in the main race (P7 & P9).
At round three which was held at Hungaroring, Carl and Maik tried to take much points as possible again – with P6 and P9 in the hyper sprint and with good potential at Hungary’s primary racing circuit, Carl was able to bag in his first podium result of the season (P3). Struggling with mid-race pace and raising tyre heat-up temperatures, Maik was only able to see the chequered flag in P11 there. As half of the season was done and with a good outlook in the team championship in that moment sitting in P2 behind a very dominant SimRacing Academy team, the CoRe SimRacing squad was warmed up for the second half of the season. However then at Spa, things went a little big wrong.
As the Audi R8 GT3 wasn’t really up its’ power at Spa against the other competitors cars, a bad qualifying outcome for Maik let him start in the lower thirds of the grid. Both hyper sprint and main race were close to a DNF due to damage and an avoidable crash. To worse it even up, Carl lost his car in Blanchimont close to the Top-5. Both CoRe drivers had to determine Spa as their drop week for the season as only 19 points overall by the CoRe squad were scored. At Oschersleben a little bit better result was achieved with Maik finishing the hyper sprint race in 9th – Carl sadly had to experience a take-out in Lap 1. In the main race at the narrow and technical german race circuit the CoRe squad finished in P5 & P7 with Ronald ending up in 9th. Despite Carl had to a potential outlook at a podium result at Oschersleben, the team was happy with a triple Top-10 result and the concluding points coming in to the standings.
The finale at Nürburgring obviously only impacted an outcome at the team championship – despite closing out the season’s ending race with two Top-10 finishes at the hyper sprint and main race, P2 in the team standings was missed out by 7 points to Team Heusinkveld’s Jan Sentkowski. With P4, P8 and P30 in the drivers standings, the CoRe SimRacing team ended this series in 3rd overall. “I’m pretty happy overall for the achievement. We could not withstand the BOP ping-pong in some of the venues in our Audi R8 GT3 against the Top-10 drivers in this competition, however, we take it – a podium, P3 in the team championship with that car entry, is something I’ll note down for me.” – said Maik after the season. “Time to focus on the ADAC’s endurance series last two races now in our AMG GT3, time to ditch the Audi forever.” – concluded Carl last but not least.