GT Masters: Niederhauser remains top 🎥

Patric Niederhauser and Kelvin van der Linde have finished in the top four in each of the six races of the 2019 ADAC GT Masters so far. For Saturday's one-hour race at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, the driver from Bern secured an excellent starting position by finishing second in qualifying. Finishing fourth behind a BMW M6, Corvette C7 and Porsche 911, the HCB-Rutronik-Racing duo was the best with one of the 13 Audi R8 LMS in the 30-car field.

Consistency pays off
In Sunday's race, the Swiss and the South African advanced from eighth on the grid to third and thus made the podium for the third time this season. Niederhauser and van der Linde lead the championship with 100 points after three of the seven ADAC GT Masters events and thus have ten points more than Markus Pommer and Marvin Kirchhöfer (Callaway Corvette), who have already won three rounds.

Patrick Niederhauser: "The results so far totally exceed our expectations. I knew from the start that it could be a good year, but I would never have dreamed that it would go so well. We've never had any bad luck, everything has certainly always gone in our favor, which is good after years of constant setbacks."

Of the other Swiss in GT3, only Jeffrey Schmidt in ninth and tenth on an Audi R8 ("we didn't get up to speed") and Rolf Ineichen (Lamborghini) in seventh in the second race finished in the top ten. Schmidt climbed the podium twice in the Junior classification with factory driver Christopher Haase in third place, although this counts less for him than the overall classification.

Young Driver Julien Apothéloz on the front row of the grid
In his still young career as a touring car driver in the ADAC TCR Germany, Julien Apothéloz experienced a highlight in Spielberg. The winner of the 2018 Young Driver Challenge started from the front row for the first time in Topcar Sport's Cupra TCR - he missed pole position by just 60 thousandths.

In Saturday's 33-minute sprint, the 18-year-old from Zurich was then in second place for ten laps before the following VW driver hit him lightly and took him off the track. On re-entering the racing line, he also touched the Malaysian, for which the stewards penalized him retrospectively. Fourth place and the first TCR podium, missed by just half a second, were a quiet disappointment for Apothéloz afterwards.

Starting from the end of the pit lane for race 2, he worked his way up to 9th place. Strained brakes and tires stopped his forward momentum. So although more would have been possible in Austria, the youngster took home a lot of positives.

Julien Apothéloz: "I now know that the speed is there to finish on the podium. We've improved steadily from the first to the third event, and unfortunately we've also had a bit of bad luck. But my day will come, I have no doubt about that."

GT4 success of Hofor Racing and disallowed victory of Alain Valente
There was a Swiss partial success in the ADAC GT4 Germany. Michael Schrey (D) and Thomas Jäger (A) steered the BMW M4 of Hofor Racing by Bonk Motorsport to its first victory in Saturday's third race of the season. The second race saw the second BMW duo finish second, while Schrey/Jäger retired.

Sunday's one-hour race was dominated by the McLaren 570S driven by YouTube star Felix von der Laden and Alain Valente. A reward for the tremendous work of their crew after the car failed to get going on the previous two days.

How they experienced Sunday's race is shown in the following professional 4-minute video:

Nevertheless, the German and the Bernese are not listed as winners for the time being because the fire extinguishing system in their GT4 sports car was apparently not activated correctly. The DMSB's appeals court now has the final say.

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