TMG-Cup: Exciting fight – Eleven hundredths decide

With an impressive win scored at the 6th round of the TMG GT86 Cup, Nils Jung and Florian Wolf of Ring Racing extended their lead in the championship classification of this single-brand cup. After a fascinating and extremely tight battle for victory, Manuel Amweg and Thomas Lampert of the Toyota Swiss Racing Team had to be satisfied with second place but they anyhow set the fastest lap time (0:46.659 minutes). The top three were completed by the Belgian Pitlane – AMC Sankt Vith team with drivers „Brody“, Bruno Barbaro and Olivier Muytjens who had started the race from pole position.

Once again, the Cup drivers provided brilliant motorsport action. There was an extremely close fight especially between the two leading teams. The lap times of Jung/Wolf and Amweg/Lampert in their Toyota GT86 were constantly below 9:50 minutes and they were separated by only few tenths of a second over many laps. It was only in the second half of the race that half-time champions Jung/Wolf were able to pull slightly away from their closest rivals. But then the race leaders had to come to the pits for a “splash and dash” shortly before the race end and Manuel Amweg, who was driving the car of the Swiss team in the final stint, was able to catch up. He started a final attack at the Hohenrain chicane but Nils Jung was able to ward off the manoeuvre and after 23 laps, he crossed the finish line with a razor-thin advance of eleven hundredths of a second.

“Oh man, that was one of those ultra-super fights in the last lap”, Uwe Kleen, team manager of the winning Ring Racing team, said. “Without our compulsory fuel stop after the penultimate lap, we would probably have been more relaxed but in this situation, we had to fight very hard until the very last metre. It was extremely exciting but Nils did a brilliant job.”

Roland Baumann, team manager of Toyota Swiss Racing, was really exhausted at the end and also a bit disappointed: “It is definitely bitter to loose with this narrow result. But we have done everything right, the team and the drivers really gave their very best. In the last lap, Manuel has tried several times to attack but Jung did not make any mistake whatsoever. This is what we simply have to respect finally.”

The Team Pitlane – AMC Sankt Vith around team boss and driver Olivier Muytjens showed a very special performance before the start of the race. For unknown reasons, the car had caught fire on Friday during the free practice. Despite the quick efforts by the pit crew to extinguish the fire, it gutted the engine compartment. The team however jointly managed to repair the car for the qualifying which started on Saturday morning. The drivers then thanked the crew for their remarkable achievement with the fastest time in practice and a third place in the race.