Home match for Young Driver AMR - 26.08.2010

Young Driver AMR will race on home turf this weekend in the sixth round of the GT1-World Championship at the Nürburgring. The famous track in the Eifel mountains is the venue of the German round of the GT1 World Championship, and will also mark the start of the second half of the season.

After a promising performance in the last round at Spa, the Young Driver AMR Team and it’s four drivers Stefan Mücke (D) and Christoffer Nygaard (DK) in the #8 Aston Martin DBR9 and Darren Turner (GB) and Tomas Enge (CZ) in the #7 Aston Martin DBR9 are highly motivated for the German round.
 
Young Driver AMR showed a good performance during the last two World Championship rounds at Paul Ricard in France and at Spa in Belgium, but bad luck prevented podium finishes and big points in both races. But the Nürburgring is a familiar track for the Young Driver AMR Team as Stefan Mücke and Tomas Enge won the 1000km race last year in an Aston Martin Le Mans prototype, and Darren Turner has also been successful at the “Ring” in the past including a class win in a Aston Martin DBR9 in 2005.
 
Young Driver AMR will also benefit from lesser “Balance of Performance” weight as 20 kg of the extra weight has been removed since the Spa round a month ago. The “Balance of Performance” tests are done to give everyone a similar performance level, hence giving the Young Driver AMR team a more equal chance in the German round.
 
Driver quotes before the Nürburgring GT1 World-round:

Tomas Enge (#7 Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin DBR9):
“Obviously I would prefer to race at the Nordschleife, but o.k., we are racing at the Grand Prix track. I like the track, it offers fast and flowing corners. With the exception of the Mercedes Arena, as it’s too slow and too slippery. We are also allowed to start with 20kg less weight at the Nürburgring which should really help our performance. We will fight for a good place, it´s the home race of our team and a really special event for the entire crew. I hope that lots of the German fans will support us and hope we can score many points.“
 
Darren Turner (#7 Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin DBR9):
“With 20kg less we should be more competitive at the Nürburgring. The last races showed that we needed a weight deduction, it was notable that we were not able to race evenly with the other brands at the front. The track should suit us well, Aston Martin had good success with the DBR9 at the Nürburgring in the past. I like to race there and have some good memories, in 2005 I took the very first class victory with the Aston Martin DBR9 in the Le Mans Series at the "Ring". You have to drive really clean here and make no mistakes. Because with the special layout of the track, every mistake will cost you a lot of time.”

Stefan Mücke (#8 Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin DBR9):
“I like the Nürburgring very much and I hope we can at least be on the podium there. We just had a test last week in Brno, which went pretty well and I hope we can transform what we learned there into a quick car at the Nürburgring. Due to the very restrictive tire rules in the World Championship, it’s almost impossible to test some things during a race weekend. So the test really helped a lot to sort some things out and be better prepared for the second half of the season.”
 
Christoffer Nygaard (#8 Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin DBR9):
“The Nürburgring is not one of my favourite tracks. I really don’t know why, but I always got some mixed emotions there. I raced there in the Polo and Seat Cup and also with the Ford GT in the ADAC GT Masters, but I didn’t get familiar with the track so far. My team colleague Stefan Mücke is very experienced at the “Ring“ and I hope he will show me some tricks. It will of course be not very easy this weekend, but our Aston Martin will have 20kg less weight compared to the previous rounds. We already had a strong pace at Spa and scored our best result of the season in the Qualifying Race there. So I hope we will also be strong in Germany. But the most important thing is to finish the race without troubles. If we manage that, I´m sure we will finish in a good position.“

PHOTOGALLERY
Photo: Petr Gabriel
Please, quote the author

TIMETABLE:

FIA GT1 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 2010:

USEFUL LINKS: