Josh Caygill enjoyed some successful preparation for this coming weekend’s resumption of the Audi Sport TT Cup season during only his second outing in the VLN Endurance Championship on the full length Nurburgring-Nordschleife on Saturday, 3rd September – the Briton securing a top six class finish.
Just a couple of weeks after his debut in VLN at the 13-mile German track, the 27-year-old from Netherton made a return to action in the popular category, with backing from Sandal BMW, behind the wheel of a Walkenhorst Motorsport powered by Dunlop BMW M235i Racing Cup class car.
Partnering Malaysian ace Jazeman Jaafar and South African racer Jordan Pepper, the trio made a huge impression in the lengthy ROWE 6 Hour ADAC Ruhr-Pokal race by scything their way through the order impressively from 14th on the ‘Cup5’ class grid into sixth place.
In delightful late-summer weather, Jaafar took the opening stint of seven laps, followed by Josh and then Pepper. In the same order, the team-mates then took their respective second stints of five laps each to conclude the six-hour contest.
“Finishing P6 wasn’t a bad result at all, especially as all three of us are new to VLN and the Nordschleife”, said the Yorkshireman, “We couldn’t have had better weather to be fair and we all enjoyed it, there was plenty going on out there with 160-plus cars on the track – a real eye opener.
“Next time out I’ll know even more what to expect and get on with things even faster. With such a massive lap, there’s a lot to take in but you soak it all up and then kind of absorb more and more as you go on. Each lap you understand a bit more, push that bit harder, but the biggest thing is the traffic. Experience helps you with that, so I can’t wait for the next race now at the end of October.”
An immense grid of 161 cars in total qualified for the seventh VLN race of the year, the longest contest of the season, with 22 entries in Cup5 alone. In the end Josh and his team-mates took the chequered flag in a mightily impressive 43rd overall from 79th at the start on the combined grid.
Josh now returns to the track at the Nurburgring, on the shorter configuration, this coming weekend, 10th/11th September, for rounds nine and 10 of the Audi Sport TT Cup season with both races to be streamed live online, as
