22 Dec Tough performance at „Rolex 24 at Daytona“ not rewarded

They were aimed at the overall victory when they travelled to the 24 Hours of Daytona. But in the end the squad of Konrad Motorsport had to go home empty-handed. After the sensational pole-position in qualifying the racing team from Verl had to retire early from the race.

This was not the way Franz Konrad had expected his team’s comeback in the USA to be. “Already after six hours we had to retire our car from the race due to heavy damage,” the 61-year-old explained. The serious damage was caused by tyre failures.

The DNF of the Porsche-squad is extremely bitter because before the race all signs pointed to success. „We did not face any problems during the practice sessions. The car just felt great,” Tandy looked back. After two best-times in the practice sessions he pulled off the coup of the weekend in qualifying. With a lap-time of 1:47.631 minutes he outclassed the opponents in the GT-Class, in which also well-known drivers from Formula One like Giancarlo Fisichella and Rubens Barrichello participated.

After the lights turned green everything played in the hands of Nick Tandy. The 2011 Porsche Carrera Cup champion successfully defended his leading position in front of the US-American Andy Lally. In the first seven laps he build a gap of more than two seconds until the first setback came. Tandy explains: „I picked up some debris, which lead to a tyre-failure. On the long way to the pits a part of the suspension was heavily damaged.”

The following repair-break cost a lot of valuable time and threw the team to the back of the field. “In spite of the damaged car we managed to keep up with the lap-times of the front-runners,” reported Franz Konrad. Shortly after the squad’s line-up of Nick Tandy, Michael Christensen, Christian Engelhart, Lance Willsey and team principal Franz Konrad fought back to the midfield. But their pursuit-race had an abrupt ending after only six hours: Once again Nick Tandy suffered from a tyre-failure.

“I was driving around 300 kph when the front right tyre suddenly blew up”, the 28-year-old was shocked. The Porsche-works-driver made use of all his talent to prevent his car from hitting the concrete wall. But the dissolving tyre smashed important parts of his Porsche 911 within a fraction of a second. “The fender, the radiator and several conductors were simply stripped off”, Konrad-Motorsport’s team principal Franz Konrad explained. Due to the heavy damage a repair was out of the question.

The 61-year-old had trouble putting his disappointment into words. “In the last weeks and months we have put so much effort into this race. This is a tragedy. Nevertheless I would like to thank our partners, who made this event possible for us. A big thank-you also to Porsche, who set a great basis for the strong performance with the competitive 911.”