Photo by: Richard Sloop
German Stefan Mücke third in the GTE Pro class at the season opening of WEC at Sebring/USA
The German sports car pilot Stefan Mücke third on the podium at the season opening of the long track world championship WEC at Sebring/USA in the GTE Pro class – a hardness test before the 24 hours of Le Mans
Berlin/Sebring (rol/ot) The German sports car pilot Stefan Mücke had an unexpected success at the season opening of the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) during the night to Sunday (18th of March/CET) at Sebring/USA. At the 60th session of the 12 hour race on the legendary track in Florida, which was the first out of eight season runs of the new long track world championship, the Berlin secured position three on the podium together with his Aston-Martin works driver colleagues Darren Turner (Great Britain) and Adrian Fernandez (Mexico) in the Aston Martin Vantage in the GTE-Pro-Class of the WEC.
„The main goal was to reach the finish line after the 12 hours. Despite two little problems we did that and on top of that we took a cup home and got some points for this championship“, the 30 year old German told satisfied, who was four and a half hours behind the wheel altogether. „Because of a lost tire just after the half time of the race and the following repair at the pit, we lost seven laps. And in the last 30 minutes of the race there was a problem with the power steering, but we made it to the finish line. And that is great if you think of the fact that we started the development programme for the new car just about two weeks ago.“
The Berlin underlined same time that this race on the hardest race track of the world has been a very good hardness test for the highlight of this season, the 24 hours of Le Mans at the middle of June. „We learned a lot and we had good speed from the beginning and we had good positions in our class as well. That is almost sensational“, tells Stefan Mücke, who has been the vice champion of the FIA GT1 world championship last year together with Darren Turner in the Aston Martin DBR9. „We can be very satisfied with the result in Sebring.“ Now there are a lot of test drives on Monday and Tuesday (19th and 20th of March) at Sebring for the upcoming WEC-Race on the 5th of May, when the 6 hours of Spa-Francorchamps are scheduled in Belgium.
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