Last weekend, the 24h race was held at the Nürburgring.

The Wochenspiegel Team Monschau started together with Rinaldi Racing on a Ferrari 488 GT3. Georg Weiss, Oliver Kainz, Jochen Krumbach and Christian Menzel drove the Italian car.

On Thursday and Friday, in both qualifying sessions, the Ferrari 488 GT3 was finalised for the Top30 qualifying. On Friday at 19.00 in the Top30 Qualifying Jochen Krumbach started in 19th position. With a good lap time, he qualified in 11th position for the grid the next morning; and was only two seconds behind the leader.

On Saturday, Oliver Kainz started the 24h race in summery weather. After seven laps and lying in the eighth position, he came in for his first pit stop and handed over the car to Jochen Krumbach. Christian Menzel drove the third stint before handing over the Ferrari to Georg Weiss. He completed his laps in glorious conditions until dusk. The Ferrari ran smoothly into the night and the drivers took turns doing the stints.

Shortly after midnight, just before the next scheduled pit stop, it slowly started to rain. Just as Oliver Kainz was heading for the pits, the rain became heavier and heavier. So the team could save a pit stop and changed to rain tyres right away. Now Jochen Krumbach had to fight his way through the difficult conditions. At this point, the Wochenspiegel Team Monschau was in 13th place. Christian Menzel also had problems with the rain. Nevertheless, he drove very good lap times and was able to improve by one position until his scheduled stop. Until the morning, the rain became stronger and weaker.

The weather didn’t get any better until Sunday afternoon, and on top of that, the fog was rising. Shortly before noon, Christian Menzel pitted and handed over to Oliver Kainz. However, the fog became so thick and the visibility so bad that the race was interrupted with a red flag just one lap later. Oliver Kainz, who was in eleventh place, had to return to the pits. Now they waited for the decision of the race control whether the race would be restarted. Under irresponsible conditions, so that the right car would win, the race was resumed shortly before 14.00 hrs. Now it was all about Oliver Kainz to keep his position and to fight his way to the front. Despite very poor visibility, he managed a very good restart. After only two laps he was able to overtake the first car and secured tenth place. Shortly before the end, many cars headed for the pits for their last pit stop. The Ferrari 488 GT3 was able to save this last stop and climbed up one position. Oliver Kainz showed a great performance. Not only did he cope very well with the bad conditions, but he was also able to keep the professional driver in the car right behind him at bay. After a total of 132 race laps and 18 stints, the Wochenspiegel Ferrari crossed the finish line in eighth place overall.

Michele Rinaldi: “A fantastic result! Considering that we had two bronze drivers, one silver driver and one gold driver on the Ferrari, the result is even more remarkable. We were able to leave the top cars behind us and fought our way to the front until the end of the race. A really great result from all the drivers, whose performance was always right. Oliver Kainz shone in the last hour of the race. To show such a performance as a bronze medallist in these conditions made the whole team happy.

Many thanks to Georg Weiss, without him the project would never have come about.

But the Ferrari also ran through the entire race without a technical problem. That definitely speaks for the great performance of Ferrari. Through Ferrari Clienti, Ferrari is taking GT3 customer sport to a new level. For a private team to place itself among all the factory teams in this way speaks for itself.

Praise to the whole team, who worked the whole 24 hours for the great final result.

Also a big thank you to Michelin. The tyres work very well on the Ferrari and as a team, we didn’t have to worry about that.”