YACO Racing shows a strong performance at the Hockenheimring

Hockenheim/Baden-Württemberg: The Austrians ended the International German GT3 Championship with a strong performance last weekend (October 22-24) at the Hockenheimring. The team scored important championship points during their last appearance in this year’s ADAC GT Masters season. „Sunday’s race was our best performance of the 2021 season,“ cheered Deputy Team Principal Peter Reicher.  

Last weekend marked YACO Racing’s most successful ADAC GT Masters race of the season. Peter Reicher commented: „We must admit that we did not accomplish what we set out to achieve going into this season. Nonetheless, we are proud to have scored some important points throughout this year’s ADAC GT Masters.“

The team arrived at the Hockenheimring on Wednesday. Some tests with the Audi R8 LMS were on Thursday’s agenda, one day before the official start of the event. A large storm over Germany interrupted the team’s plans. For safety reasons, all practice sessions were postponed to the afternoon. This left the team exactly one hour and fifteen minutes late on Thursday to tune the Audi for the 4574-meter-long circuit. 

Driver Simon Reicher summarized his impressions as follows: „We were not happy that Thursday fell in the water, literally. We had an important testing agenda ahead of us. The two free practice sessions on Friday didn’t really save us. We had a hard time finding the right setup through Saturday afternoon. We were far from our own expectations after qualifying in 27^th position. At that point, the weekend seemed to be going in the wrong direction – until Saturday’s race. We were swept forward in the standings thanks to some fortunate circumstances such as safety car phases and the help of our competitors. This would not have been possible out of our own power.“ The Austrians were pleased with 15^th position and one important championship point.

Expectations for Sunday morning’s qualifying were high. Everyone in the team was aware it would be their last qualifying session of the year. „We had high hopes for our last qualifying session of the 2021 season, but 20^th position was not where we wanted to be. It was up to the final race to fight for a happy end of our season. This was especially important for our fans, friends, partners, and all team members who have worked so hard all year. We decided to try a radical setup, which turned out great. We progressed to 15^th, held the position, and didn’t once run the risk of being attacked. Apart from finishing eleventh at Oschersleben and Zandvoort, Sunday’s race at the Hockenheimring was our best performance of the 2021 season,“ sums up a happy Simon Reicher.