Double victories at Hockenheim

Perfect season start for Top Speed at Hockenheim: Ingo Gerstl won twice in the OPEN, Florian Schnitzenbaumer twice in the FORMULA class.

BOSS GP Champion Ingo Gerstl was unbeatable in the first of seven season stops. Phil Stratford in Jean Alesi’s Benetton B197 was able to keep up with Gerstl’s slowed pace in the two half-hour races, but against Gerstl’s STR1-Cosworth, who is ten years younger than the Benetton, he had of course not grown any weed. Ingo’s goal of beating the 1:20 mark was achieved impressively with 1:19.664 min during qualifying.

Much more action was going on in the smaller class, the FORMULA. Eleven GP2 and four World Series cars set up for the first race of the year. On Saturday the fight for victory raged between Top Speed pilot Florian Schnitzenbaumer (DEU) and Salvatore de Plano from Italy. The lead changed several times, shortly before the end of the race de Plano crashed into the rear of Schnitzenbaumer’s black GP2 – outside in the braking zone to the Mercedes curve the runner-up tried to pass. De Plano jumped over the right rear wheel of the front runner and stopped on the track with the left front wheel damaged. The young Italian had to be taken to hospital, his back hurt – according to the latest information he is on the road to recovery. The race was then abandoned and not continued. As the order of the previous lap was evaluated, de Plano was ranked second ahead of Armando Mangini.

At this point we wish Salvatore de Plano a good recovery! We hope you’ll be back soon!

In race 2 Schnitzenbaumer brought home the double victory. For third place was a worth seeing duel between the debutant Bianca Steiner from Top Speed and Andreas Fiedler. After a collision in qualifying and a spin in the first race, Fiedler had started from far behind. Steiner had also turned in the first race, passing the possible podium. In the second race she did not defend for long against the sportscar driver Fiedler, who was also struggling with the tyre temperature towards the end of the race – Steiner was separated from the podium in the end by less than a second. “At the end of the race, I almost got him, when Andreas was in trouble. I would have needed another lap.” Nevertheless, the 27-year-old from Lower Austria gave an impressive display of talent at her first BOSS GP start.

Rookie number 2, Manfred Loach, didn’t do quite as well Bianca. In Spielberg the new Top Speed driver wants to turn his fast split times into good results at. A fourth car was prepared by Top Speed on the first race weekend of the year for the Austrian Thomas Jakoubek. It was also his first time in the BOSS GP. After 11th place in qualifying, however, he decided to not participate in the races.

The next stop for the BOSS GP team will be at Austria’s Top Speed home, from May 18 to 20 at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. With free entry and lots of V10 and V8 sounds roaring through the alps.

Pictures: Michael Kavena/BOSS GP