Arkivet
Podium place in first race with new Z4 GT3
Martin Öhlin finished third overall in the first race in the Swedish GT-league that kicked off its season at Anderstorp in Sweden. Martin drove the for 2011 completely rebuilt BMW Z4 GT3 together with Magnus Öhman for WestCoast Racing. The car was finished just a few days before the race and the team treated this weekend as an extensive shake-down test of the new car.
Martin qualified the car third on the grid with a safe lap before team mate Magnus Öhman drove the remaning of qualifying to get extra seat time in the new car. The team decided to let Magnus Öhman drive the opening stint in the one hour long race before handing over to Martin Öhlin.
Öhman lost a couple of places in the beginning of the race but could during the stint take two of those places back and he entered the pits 25 minutes later for the driver change in fourth place. They were then trailing the leaders in the Audi R8 by 25 seconds as Martin went out for this stint.
He started chasing down the leaders and immediately took over the third spont on his second lap in the stint. He then set a string of fastest laps as he continued to chase down the leaders and entering the final lap he was within striking distrance of the second placed Audi R8, just a two tenths behind and just six seconds behind the leaders. Coming up a lapped car four corners from the end Martin had to back down and lost the chance to do a final attack for second place. His drive showed the potential in the new BMW Z4 GT3 and Martin was pleased with the race afterwards.
– It was fun to get to chase the others and the car is awesome to drive, Martin said. We lacked a lot of grip at the end and it was a bit tricky but with a few more laps I’m sure we would have finished at least second. For us this was mainly a test of the new car and as such I think we can say it went pretty well. It was a fun weekend, now I’m heading back home and refocus for the STCC-round at Mantorp.
Team manager Dick Jönsson Wigroth was pleased to finally see the team’s new GT-car on the race track and was happy with its’ first race weekend.
– Of course we always wants to win, that’s why we are doing this but this time that was not the most important thing. We needed mileage on the car and now we have a full race weekend and a lot of data on the car. There’s no doubt the car is really good . We will now continue to work with it and set it up for the next races.