Nürburgring 24 Hours driver report: Ben Tuck - Qualifying

Filing his report after all the qualifying action is in the books is Walkenhorst Motorsport’s Ben Tuck. The #74 BMW M4 GT4 driver, who shares the car with Jörg Breuer, Dirk-Tobias Wahl and Sami-Matti Trogen, qualified second in the SP8T class, beaten only by his team-mates in the sister machine having logged his fastest time in Thursday’s first qualifying session.

Ben Tuck: “We knew that yesterday in the first qualifying session, Q1, that the weather was probably going to come in for the night-time qualifying and then we knew today was going to be wet as well. So we knew that Q1 was when we were going to do our times.

“In the team, we’ve got us the #74 and also the #73 BMW Junior car. So I think they were of the same thinking that we should set our times in Q1 which is what we did. I went out first – not sure what the #73 car did but I went out first – had a Code 120 on my lap so then Sami-Matti Trogen went out.

“I think he had a bit of traffic, so right at the end I went out again to try and set a lap which in the end was good enough for P2, less than a second behind the BMW Junior car which, obviously, I wish I was a second ahead rather than a second behind but that’s just the difference in traffic in the lap. Less than a second, that’s not really any difference in the drivers, that ends up being difference in traffic. We can be happy about that, both cars at the front of our class in qualifying for our team.

“So, in the night-time qualifying we let our two Am drivers take the start of that session because they didn’t get to drive in Q1 because that’s when me and Sami-Matti were trying to set a lap, so in Q2 in the night we let them get their night-time practice in and two laps each for the regulations. Then, once the rain started to come in, Sami and I didn’t get to do any night practice because there were lots of crashes and the rain came in so we decided not to risk it.

“Finally then today, Q3, we just used it as practice. It was only one hour so we all only got one lap each and it was the first time for all of us driving the wet Yokohama tyres. Just one lap preparation on wet tyres, that’s new for all of us.

“Hopefully the race goes well tomorrow, we’re looking good, we’re feeling relaxed. Our main competition is the other car in the team, the BMW Juniors, so we’ll see how it goes. In our car we’ve got two young guys, Sami-Matti and myself, and then two gentleman drivers too. We’re just wanting to make sure we make it to the finish and our main competition is the Juniors so we know that once our Ams get in the car, they’re going to pull a bit of a gap so we’re only really focusing on ourselves in the race.”

More driver reports

Stay tuned for more driver reports this weekend from Manuel Metzger, Lars Kern, David Pittard, Thomas Kiefer, Tim Scheerbarth and Ben Tuck.

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