Barely a week after his victory at Silverstone in England, Anthoine arrived on the famous Nurburgring track, in Germany this week end, with the firm intention of renewing his outstanding british performance. You will note that for this event a number of NEC Championship drivers were present, and 35 drivers had ambitions to shine on the Nurburg circuit.
The practice sessions on friday allowed the team to fine-tune the set up and see a priliminary hierarchy. Anthoine took 7th then 6th place with minimal time differences.
On saturday morning, with pleasant weather, the qualifying race started at 10:35. A few minutes later, Anthoine was off to a flying start for the most difficult and important exercise of the week end : the QUALIFYING. After a warm up lap and a flying lap, and as the cameras film Anthoine's car in a curve of 6 (that's 200km/h), sudenly the car seems projected out of control out of the track and into the safety rail. When the car gets back to the paddock the conclusion is unanimous, a broken suspension triangle is the cause of the accident. Anthoine ends up with just a slight pain in the knee but 7th in the qualifier for his group, far behind his potential. Time was short for the mecanics who can be congratulated for enabling Anthoine to finish 11th in Race 1.
On sunday morning under a menacing sky, the second qualifier offered a new opportunity for the drivers to distinguish themselves. Anthoine seized this opportunity b coming 2nd in his group, which put him in 4th start position. At 2:35 pm after an hour of rain, the Safety Car gave the start of Race 2. Puddles of rain made the exercise very delicate, but after a concentrated race, and for the 9th time this season, Anthoine finish on the poduim in 3rd place.
In Anthoine's word : .... "Success escaped us this saturday with a broken suspension triangle in the qualifying race. The team did an incredible job to enable me to participate in race 2, and learn from the incident for the next day. These efforts have not been in vain because on sunday morning we were in second line behind a very inspired Fortec team. Another positive point, on sunday on a wet track we earned a place on the podium. For sure, we could have obtained a much better result this week end, but it's all over now and we must prepare for Le Mans, because our goal is the same, and the event means even more to me" ....
Next event : Le Mans the 26th and 27th Septembre.
