Motorsport News
A Bat Out of Green Hell
By source: PSR
Apr 16, 2007, 21:12

Volvo Team PSR bounced back at the second round of the German Endurance Championship. Only two weeks after both Volvo S60 had been involved in nasty crashes, Ulli Andree/Remo Lips/Stephan Herter scored an impressive second place in Saturday’s second round of the series.

The car would even have been strong enough for a class victory, had it not been for a problem with the fuel pick-up during the race. Andree qualified the car for second place on the grid but felt a problem on the toe-in during qualifying. The mechanics set to repair it but could not get it done in time before the pit-lane closed.

Andree hat to start from pit road. But it took him only one and a half laps to thunder into a commanding lead. „The car was just fantastic,“ said Andree. „You cannot praise the work of our mechanics enough. You simply didn’t feel any aftermath from the accident at all.“

On lap 7, the car started to misfire. „We believe that the engine also pushed some hoses inside the tank around, which we dind’t find out during our repair work,“ said team principal Danny Berk. „We thus had to alter our strategy and bring each pit stop forward by three laps to not run out of fuel.“

Andree handed the car over to Swiss Remo Lips. But as the pit stops went out of sequence, neither Lips nor Stephan Herter, who took the car over for the third stint, could re-establish the Volvo in the lead. Both set to securing second place instead, which they managed successfully and without any worries on the way. „Winnig it at the comeback would have been the icing on the cake,“ said Berk. „But given the state the car was in two weeks ago, we have every reason to be pleased with second place. Except from the fuel pick-up problem, the car ran faultlessly, and there was not a trace to be found from the accident. The mechanics worked for 14 hours per day every day between the races, with the odd 24-hour shift in the running, too. It was a full-on effort – especially since we had also tried to get the second car ready on time. We would have nearly done it but hadn’t got all the spare parts on time. The side panels were the bits that were missing at the end, simply because they are no parts of mass production but have to be manufactured especially for us.“

At the next race, PSR will field two Volvo S60 again and try to score the first win of the season.


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