Callaway Competition suffers another DNF at Hockenheim
Callaway Competition Europe calls Hockenheim their “Home Track”, just about 38 miles from their base in Leingarten.
Callaway is the longest running and one of the most respected competitors in the ADAC-GT Masters Series.
“Jinx Track” more accurately reflects how things turned out in 2020. Absent loyal fans kept away by the lockdown, the team was still energized to rebound from last year’s unlucky crash that totaled the # 77 C7 GT3-R, pre-maturely ending their 2019 season
We are grateful to Team Principal Ernst Woehr for sharing what happened in his own words.
“During end of the first stint in the Saturday race the car did not shift down any more, which made it impossible to continue.”
“The guys could not really duplicate the situation in the pits, so they took the transmission apart to find the possible cause. After not finding the problem, they went deeply into electronics and luckily found a wire/pin in a connector that lost connection once in a while. It was fixed and everybody hoped it would work on Sunday morning qualifying as there was no more possibility to drive the car before.”
“What happened in qualifying though was a very unusual situation. Jeffrey (Schmidt) could only place the car on P 19 and reported that he has absolutely no grip.”
“We were extremely frustrated until we realized that the cars around us, 5-4 cars in front of us and 3-4 cars behind us, who all were within a couple of 2 tenth of a second must have had the same problem, which was that the Pirelli tyres which were given out for this day must be absolutely scrap. The Porsche on P20 was the Pole setter of the day before!!!! The leader of the Championship was on P16 which tells a lot! So, we were somehow at least satisfied with that lousy position.”
“During the race Jeffery was almost as quick as the leaders, could pass some cars, but fell back after the Bentley spun in front of him and to avoid a crash, he had to practically stop the car and drive around it. He fell back to close the end of the field, could make it back to 20th, but then realized that the car was becoming hard to drive.”
“At the pit stop we saw that the front splitter was entirely torn down and had started to vibrate and with no front grip it made no sense to continue. Not finishing both races is very frustrating.”
Saturday’s race was won by # 92 Porsche 911 GT3R SSR Performance of Michael Ammermuller & Christian Engelhart.
Sunday’s race was won by # 31 Audi R8 LMS Rutronic Racing of Patric Neiderhauser & Kelvin van der Linde.
Results compiled by Wayne Ellwood
Next races at Sachsenring Oct 2-4.
