Having made some gains the weekend prior at the Nrburgring, Wirth and the Callaway Competition team headed for the Red Bull Ring with an optimistic outlook and a promising carsadly, as has been the trend for Wirth, he was again defeated by bad luck.
Wirth was happy with his qualifying effort on Friday, the #3 Pilot Corvette was strong and he was set to start beside their sister car on the front row in 2nd place for Saturdays race. Co-driver Christian Hohenadel was somewhat less successful however, running into bad luck with traffic in his fastest laps. The #3 would start from 9th place for Sunday.
Race #1 at the beautiful Red Bull Ring got off to a great start, but as always the competition was strong. Conceding 2nd place to the Farnbacher Porche early in his stint, Wirth opted to settle in to 3rdplace to preserve the tires for the second half of the race. Everything seemed to be going to plan and a podium finish was once again within their grasp. Sadly however, before coming into the pits Wirth was held up by a lapped AUDI and lost a lot of time. Hohenadel pushed hard but was only able to cross the finish line in 5th place. Adding insult to injury Hohenadel was later penalized for avoidable contact on the last lap and official results put the #3 Callaway Competition Corvette in 13th place. A huge disappointment for the whole team.
Going into Sundays race optimistic thoughts had turned to despondencythey knew the odds were stacked against them starting from 9th place in a field filled with top talent. After a cautious start, Hohenadel dropped back to P13 but managed to struggle up as far as P7 before handing the #3 Pilot Corvette over at the driver change. Despite a reasonably good stop, things got worse once again when the crew radioed to tell Wirth that he had to come in for a drive-through penalty that was being levied as a result of his co-driver speeding through a yellow flag sector during the first half of the race. Despite his best efforts, Wirth was only able to achieve a 9th place finish for the Callaway team.
When asked for his comments on the race, Wirth was reluctant to talk about yet another hugely disappointing weekend, What can I say? Our sister car won both races this weekend, and our car was really fast. They told me on Sunday that I was the fastest car out there during my stint. Its not that we dont have a car for the podiumwe doand were showing that we can run up frontso this is a huge disappointment for me. Im a racerI want to winbut its been a very long time since thats happened and its a real struggle to keep motivated when things outside my control keep preventing it. We just keep working hard. Last year was bad and it feels like Ill never shake this luck. I just keep telling myself that it has to change for the better soonso I move forward.
The ADAC GT Masters takes a short break and races once again at the end of the month at the Lausitzring in Klettwitz Germany - August 30thSeptember 1st.
