6th round Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup - Silverstone (GB)
Hard work - terrific pay off for Konrad
With a perfect
result after hard work Konrad Motorsport returns back
from the 6th round of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup in Silverstone. Nick
Tandy and Patrick Huisman with a win and a third rank drove to the best
team performance of the year. Tandy's first Pole position, the fastest
lap in the race of the Supercup as well as his leadership in the Rookie
standings completed the successful weekend of the German team at the
British Grand Prix.Patrick Huisman claimed a podium finish
„Wowww, what a weekend”, Silverstone star Nick Tandy is almost speechless during the winner interview. “I have won everything what can be won at a Supercup weekend - and it all happened just in front of my home – a dream came true”, Tandy, who lives only 40 kilometres away from Silverstone shone about a perfect start into the second half of Europe’s fastest makes cup. Team manager Franz Konrad even gets a little clearer:
"Both cars on the podium shows where we are standing as a team at the moment. We want to take this performance along in the remaining four races and put championship leader René Rast and his team under pressure.
The championship is not over yet”, he puts a clear declaration, referring to second rank in the driver- and team standings and giving a hint on the small gap to the leaders.
Already in the Qualifying Nick Tandy and the fourfold Supercup Champion Patrick Huisman made clear, who had domiciliary rights in Silverstone.
With an advantage of
0.167 seconds Tandy snatched his first ever pole
position in the Supercup. "My Konrad-Porsche was setup brilliant. To
clinch the pole with such a car was easy." Team mate Patrick Huisman
with a gap of 0.8 seconds covered eighth rank. "We slowly approach the
set-up I need and that is different to Nick’s. I now promise a
top-5-finish for the race”, he optimistically dictated into the
notebooks of the journalists.The race Sunday at the sold out Silverstone scenery became the great show of the two Konrad-Pilots then. Right away from the start, Tandy made clear that no one was able to beat him in the 12 laps of the race. "I have tried it", said opponent Rast who started with Tandy from the first row of the grid. "However, I have had no chance."
After one and a half rounds the German gave up with his attacks. "Then I have put in a series of fast laps and I was gone", Tandy, who partly was about one second faster than the rest, laughs. With a clear lead of 5.5 seconds he secured his first ever Supercup victory and beside it all he drove the fastest lap of the race.
Team-mate Patrick Huisman meanwhile battled with numerous opponents passing all of them. “Just before the end of the race I closed the gap to Norbert Siedler and I knew I had only one chance to overtake him, claiming my second podium finish this season.” With a clean move he got pass the Austrian and snatched third rank.
“I clenched the fist on the straight and was looking forward to the chequered flag”, he laughs about the only gaffe in his race. "Pleased too early", the 24-fold race winner of the Supercup grins. "It was still one lap to go."
Beside ranks one and three, Konrad Motorsport comes back home from England with positions two and six in the driver standings, the lead in the rookie standings and second rank in the team standings. “That’s the way it can go on”, team manager Franz Konrad shines. “We assure our opponents a hot second half of the season.”
And this one starts at Hockenheim in fourteen days. The next round of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup takes place on July, 23rd to 25th, in the context of the German Grand Prix.
