FIA GT - Silverstone

Markus had a trouble-free race at Silverstone and finished 7th in the DKR Engineering Corvette C6.R he shared with Jos Menten. A decent result considering the Finnish-Dutch duo drove the car first time on Friday in the free practice and the team also raced first time with the new generation Michelin tyres. Menten qualified the car to 8th, so a good run from the pair won them one place and two championship points.

"It's rare to have such an uneventful race. Apart from Jos' first lap battle with another Corvette, we ran most of the race alone without any problems and didn't do one single mistake, actually throughout the entire weekend. However, our pace was not what I expected and we were simply not quick enough to gain any more places in the tough GT1 category. Well, we did lose some track position and a chance for 6th when pitting just before Safety Car came on track, but that was our only delay during those 2 hours. It was the first time we drove this car in a long time and even though the team is doing well in French GT, they were not racing on the usual Pirelli, but on Michelin who brought to Silverstone a tyre that was new to all of us. In this situation we needed to be very efficient or lucky to get everything right during those 2 practice sessions, but unfortunately didn't manage to do it.

I spent my time in the practice sliding around, getting used to the car again and trying to find a good race set-up. I didn't get any new rubber during practice, so I didn't really know what to expect in the race. I knew that the tyre was really quick on the first couple of laps and then lost a junk of performance. We made a lot of changes and the car was well balanced, we were just lacking grip. I'm still not sure what caused it, though. Everyone was on similar tyres, but we seemed to suffer more than the others. I was robbed of the chance to enjoy the new tyres and set a competitive lap time when the SC interfered. It was unbelievable to notice the grip disappearing during those slow laps!

I know I should be satisfied with not putting a foot wrong during the weekend and having a good race, but I can't be happy with 7th. Still, I really enjoyed being back in FIA GT and having a chance to race the Corvette again. I hope I’ll get a chance to do some more FIA GT races this year, at least the 24 Hours of Spa in July."