Marek Böckmann is going for a three-year winning streak in class this year, having won the SP10/GT4 class of the Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2019 with Black Falcon and again last year in SP-PRO. Having changed teams to SchnitzelAlm Racing for 2021, if the team’s VLN Nürburgring Endurance Series performances in the past months are any indication, that uninterrupted winning streak is a very real possibility for Marek, who shares the #34 SchnitzelAlm Racing Mercedes-AMG GT4 with Marcel Marchewicz, Reinhold Renger and Tim Neuser.
Starting position: P48 (P1 in SP10/GT4 class, 3rd fastest GT4 including Cup-X and SP8T classes).
NÜRBURGRING 24 HOURS: ENTRY LIST | LIVESTREAM | NEWS | VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS
REPORTS: QUALIFYING 1 | QUALIFYING 2 | QUALIFYING 3 | TOP QUALIFYING | PRE-RACE NOTEBOOK | RACE UPDATE 1 | RACE UPDATE 2 – RED FLAG | RACE UPDATE 3 – FINISH
DRIVER REPORTS | THURSDAY: BEN TUCK | LARS KERN | THOMAS KIEFER | ADAM CHRISTODOULOU | MAREK BÖCKMANN
FRIDAY: LARS KERN | BEN TUCK | ADAM CHRISTODOULOU | THOMAS KIEFER | MAREK BÖCKMANN
RACE | SATURDAY: BEN TUCK | MAREK BÖCKMANN | ADAM CHRISTODOULOU | THOMAS KIEFER
SUNDAY: BEN TUCK | ADAM CHRISTODOULOU | MAREK BÖCKMANN
Marek Böckmann: “The pole lap was Marcel’s, he did the first run with the soft tyre compound and set a very good lap time of about 9:00.9. We had three really, really good lap times, any of those times would’ve been good enough for pole and in the end Marcel set the pole time, so congrats to him!
“Then we tried the medium tyres because we wanted to know how well the car would drive on this tyre set. It was quite OK, I did two laps of 9:01.9 and 1.7, so it was really close. The soft tyre is just the best tyre, so we decided that we’ll use the soft tyres as much as we can, but you always need to watch the temperatures and everything.
“It was important for us to do this tyre test because for a 24-hour distance it’s always very important you use the right set of tyres at the right moment, so we collected a lot of data.
“It was an advantage for us because in the third qualifying we had the chance to watch the other guys and see what they were doing, if they would try and set another time, so we could react if they would be faster. In the end no one could beat our time which was good for us because we didn’t have to go out again and push one more lap. That’s good because the car is now perfectly prepared for the race. It’s also important to not have to run more laps when you have such a long race ahead.
“I ran-in the brakes today during the session [on Friday], and they are perfect! I think I did a good job with this – someone has to do it!
“We are fully prepared now, it now comes down to getting through the 24 hours without any mistakes, without getting penalties under yellow flags or going too fast in the pitlane. We have to keep everything together and race our own pace.
“I’m really looking forward to the race.”
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