Round 8 - Great Britain (Silverstone)
ACE SERIES Qualifying Race Report Finishing Order Race Statistics Driver Comments Action Replays Download Mixed Logfile Semi-Pro Results
	1996/97 Pole Position:  1:15.304 (Alan Strang) 1996/97 Race Time:  1h21m06.194 (Oliver Roberts) Race Distance:  59 laps

Qualifying

Race

The first round of pit stops that lasted from lap 14 till lap 25 didn't help to make things clearer. Michal Janak took the lead in lap 20 from team mate Oliver Roberts, but mostly because Michal was the very last driver to make his stop. After that, things finally began to sort out: Roberts was in the lead, followed by Janak and Markus Kruggel, both ten seconds behind, but the Wild 13 driver was on a different strategy aiming for three stops and so he joined a big group of drivers after his second visit to the pits in lap 30. This group consisted of not less than six drivers, including Jan Svehlik, Kruggel, Alan Strang, Nuno Maltez, Mirko Patzenbein and Thomas Bodlien. Another driver, however, showed that he was able to keep the pace, too: Ignacio Garcia Cuadrado drove a couple of fastest race laps during the first third of the race and was not showing up at the front only because of an early accident in lap 16.

It needed another series of stops, lasting from lap 37 till lap 45, to give an indication of the possible race result, though. Oliver was still in front and Michal kept the gap smaller than 20 seconds. Svehlik was on third with 45 seconds behind the leader followed by Kruggel and Strang another ten seconds behind. For a couple of laps, both admins were very close, battling for 4th, but then Strang had a problem and lost 20 seconds in lap 50. This put him behind Patzenbein and while the first four positions were clearly taken by Roberts, Janak, Svehlik and Kruggel, all driving similar lap times, Strang and Patzenbein kept it exciting until the end. Behind those two, Saupe and Garcia were fiercely battling for 7th and usually passed the start-finish line side-by-side during the last few laps.

But again, the fastest lap times were driven by men further behind: Thomas Bodlien and especially Rafal Ziarnik were "pumping in some good lap times", as a more promintent commentator would have said. Both had a couple of low 1:17s at the end, resulting in a fantastic new lap record, set by Rafal with a 1:17.171

Race Statistics

Action Replays

• Eik Hoffmann (Red Diana):
  Nobody really likes to slow down at Silverstone when the yellow flags are shown, Eik didn't like that, either.

• Markus Kruggel (Wild 13):
  "Although I faced CCs a soon as lap 7 (and then I saw quite a lot of them retiring just in front of me on the straight, see replay) I found a rhythm and that four of the slowest CCs were the victims made me confident."

• Mirko Patzenbein (Enigma Racing):
  "My heartbeat gone higher and higher in the lap ???. There crashes Herbert and Katayama. After this crashes i dont get back my countinuely race. Look this nice replay...if you can."

Download the replays (33K)