Dunlop came within half an hour of scoring its first win of the year at the fourth round of the FIA GT Championship at Hockenheim, Germany. Chris Goodwin and Joao Barbosa were running in a strong second position in their RML Saleen when they made a late stop for fuel, and would have inherited the victory when the leading Ferrari hit trouble late in the race.
The Portuguese rejoined in fourth position, but heat had built up in the brakes with the car stopped in the pits. The brake problem that had caused the drivers to be careful all race worsened, and Barbosa pitted again to have the pads replaced, dropping to 11th.
“We had tried to double-stint the Dunlop tyres, but of course the performance was not as good in the second hour as the first, so it was hard to hold everyone on fresh tyres off,” said Goodwin. “We think that we had heat soak during that last stop, so we had to change the pads.” The sister RML Saleen of Tommy Erdos and Mike Newton had the same brake problem, and then stopped when the car lost drive.
A dramatic last hour saw retirements and punctures for rival teams, leaving the Dunlop-shod Creation Autosportif team in fourth position at the flag after a competitive and reliable run. Jamie Campbell-Walter was tasked with crossing the line in the Lister Storm that he shared with Jamie Derbyshire, just 13 seconds behind the winner after three hours of racing.
Arjan van der Zwaan, Christophe Bouchut and Henrik Roos brought their Chrysler Viper home in seventh position. Bouchut was delighted with the performance of the car in the opening laps, but believed that he had been held up during the opening laps. “The performance of the car was so good that I could have led the race overall, without a problem,” he said.
The official Lister Storm of Tom Coronel and Patrick Pearce was having a strong run on Dunlop rubber when Coronel was forced to bale out of the car when it caught fire. The Dutchman had been lapping competitively when disaster struck, and believes that the car will be competitive at the next round at Brno, Czech Republic, in two weeks.
“We are obviously very disappointed for the RML team because they had run very competitively and deserved a good result,” said Dunlop manager Graham Shuter. “We did everything that we could and so did the team, but we were unlucky. The Dunlop tyre performance at Hockenheim was very competitive with the hot track temperatures that we knew would come. We just put a stronger tyre on and we found it worked very well.”
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