Nürburgring 24 Hours driver report: Ben Tuck – Restart to finish

#101 Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 driver Ben Tuck makes his GT3 debut in the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring. Sharing the Bayern machine with experienced and highly skilled Christian Krognes, David Pittard and Jörg Müller, the talented young Brit comes in on the back of two years of GT4 experience at the Nordschleife.

Having restarted the race from 27th, Ben found his was to P15 at the finish.

NÜRBURGRING 24 HOURS: ENTRY LIST | LIVESTREAM | NEWS

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

Ben Tuck: “We took the restart after the red flag being still two laps down, unfortunately. That was pretty much where we were from there. I think all of our stints, all three of us, Christian, David and myself, we all showed pretty good pace it’s just unfortunate that obviously if we had guys in the top ten behind us then we needed to let them pass rather than fight them too much.

“I really, really enjoyed my stint actually. I did the last hour, it was quite a good stint for my own confidence, to be honest. Like I said, I struggled a little bit with confidence in the first of my two stints last night because it was a bit damp and I just didn’t know how to handle the conditions.

“But it was dry today — and a bit foggy but that’s fine as long as I know it’s dry. It was all good actually, I really, really enjoyed it, my confidence is waaay better. I know I was driving much better myself, even on my out-lap I had the Frikadelli Porsche behind me and considering how the pace was yesterday I thought he was just going to overtake me and start dropping me, but I actually stayed ahead all the way until the end of the lap and then he just towed passed me on the Döttinger Hohe, or maybe he got passed me with some traffic — but it was right near the end of the lap.

“So I’m really happy that I actually had the pace.

“And then afterwards I was with him and we also had an Audi with us as well, when there was a weird situation where the Frikadelli Porsche and me were in the middle of a Code 60 Zone when I saw in the mirror the green flag come out behind me but we’d already gone past him when he was Code 60. I then saw the BMW Junior car with I think Farfus driving come flying through the green flag and overtake us both by the time we got out of the Ccode 60 Zone and there was nothing we could have done about it because we were stuck in the code 60. He caught us up and overtook us at the next green flag.

“But still, after that I think there was four cars: there was the BMW Junior Team, Frikadelli Porsche and one of the Audis — I don’t know which one it was. I managed to stick with all four of them and for me that was the first time that I really felt that I managed to show pace from some of the top guys.

“So yeah, I’m really, really confident after that stint. I really enjoyed it, the car felt amazing and it was just a shame we were two laps behind. It shows that after the reduced time of the race we were still only two laps behind and made up positions back up to P15. From the leader we were two laps behind so that means if the incident didn’t happen or if we didn’t lose a lap, it means we could still have been on the lead lap and fighting easily within the top ten and maybe the top five — we know that we had the pace in the end.

“There are loads of positives to take from it, just a small shame about the incident but those things happen.”

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