The season debut of the 12-hour race of the Nürburgring Endurance Series was eagerly awaited last weekend (September 9-11). The Austrian Simon Reicher accepted the challenge together with his team Lionspeed by Car Collection and his teammates Florian Spengler, Jörg Viebahn and Leon Köhler. What made this 12-hour race unique? A qualifying session, a 6-hour race on Saturday, and a second 6-hour race on Sunday. The starting grid for Sunday’s race would be determined by the finishing order of Saturday’s race. All cars start the race from the pit lane while the entire circuit is under Code 60. The race is first released once the last competitor has left the pit lane. This approach is a debut among 12-hour races. 

Saturday held a friendly mix of sun and rain, typical for this time of year in the Eifel region. Every 20 minutes, the conditions changed in different sections of the track, which resulted in a challenging poker for the right tires. Simon Reicher reports: „Those were very difficult conditions. I went out with rain tires and positioned our Audi in sixth place. But then the track dried more and more and my teammate Leon Köhler had to switch to slick tires. In the end, we were more than happy with fifth place on Saturday.“ 

Spengler, who started the first race, had to complete two stints on the Nordschleife instead of one. „We made a last-minute decision to double the stint. A driver change at that point in the race would have meant that the following teammate would need two laps to adjust to the track conditions. We would have lost too much time in doing so. That said, great performance by Florian, who moved us up to second place,“ says Simon Reicher.

The quartet with Florian Spengler, Jörg Viebahn, Leon Köhler and Simon Reicher held on to second place up until dawn and darker conditions. „Due to the poor setting of our headlights, we lost time in the dark and dropped back to fifth place. Fortunately, we kept our lead in our Pro-Am category,“ describes Reicher. Then, shortly before the end of the race, came the shock. An overly motivated competitor gave the number 23 Audi a blow to the rear right tire. „We were very lucky that the car held up through the finish line,“ explains a relieved Simon Reicher.

„In order not to immediately incur a 2-lap penalty, we started the race on Sunday with the defective rim-tire combination and came into the pits after one lap for a change of tires. This allowed us to reduce loss of time to a minimum. However, we didn’t expect this: The pit light was on red for three and a half minutes and kept us waiting. We lost the lead in our category and dropped down from fifth place overall,“ reports the Audi driver. 

After the race organizers corrected the mistake with the red light and credited the team with the lost three and a half minutes, Simon Reicher’s and his colleagues finished in a respectable eighth position overall. As winners in the Pro-Am category, the 22-year-old toke home another trophy for his collection.

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