Nürburgring 24 Hours driver report: David Pittard - Qualifying

England’s David Pittard starts this year’s Nürburgring 24 Hours on the back of a successful pre-season in which the driver of the #101 Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 won the first race of the season and followed this up with several podium finishes. He shares the car with Walkenhorst regulars Christian Krognes and Mikkel Jensen as well as this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour winner Jordan Pepper.

David Pittard: “I’m very happy with P9, especially in the damp conditions, it was more than we expected. The conditions definitely didn’t suit us for the top qualifying but obviously our pace from the previous
Nürburgring Endurance Series races put us in Q2, so we didn’t have to worry too much. We were a bit disappointed that obviously the cars like the #4 Mercedes, they had another run in the Q1 session so we knew they would be very strong in the Q2 session. But, really thinking about, it pole was always out of the option for us whilst it was still wet.

“We went with the idea that if we went on the intermediates or the wets that we would probably be in the bottom half of the classification in Q2 and even if we went on the cut slick tyre, we would also be in the bottom half of the classification. But, if the cut slick could work, then we could get more out of the qualifying session and that’s what we did.

“Christian was in to drive and he did an amazing, very mature drive to keep the car on the track literally for the outlap and when we saw the Schnitzer car box and then the Audi car box, we were like ‘ah no we’ve got to box, we’re going to be so far off’. But, we stuck to our aggressive game plan because we knew that’s what we needed to do to work.

“The first lap was just keeping it on the track and Chris had a little moment but he kept it together which was mega. Then lap two again it was just a very reserved, measured drive. The Ferrari overtook him even but that didn’t fluster him, he just pushed on and drove his own lap and yeah, we were super pleased to be P9. That’s how close it was to the cut-off where a lot of other guys were burning their tires out in one lap. We played the slightly longer game and I think we were rewarded for it so it was a great call by the team and a great job by Chris to deliver the result as well.

“P9 was better than expected, we shall see what the race is like, I think the conditions are going to be so variable so literally people are going to be making massive tire calls throughout the whole race. It’s going to be very unpredictable as a result of it. We hope we can play this to our advantage and that’s how were going to get a strong result for the race itself – we should be good.”

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.

Photos by Frozenspeed and JP Wagner.

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