The 24 Hours ADAC Total of Nordschleife Nürburgring 2020 edition was particularly wet and cold. For Michele Beretta the race ended few hours before the finish when a place among the leaders was outlining. Immediately after his first 24 Hours of Le Mans, Michele left for Nürburgring, where raced the 24 Hours ADAC Total at the wheel of the Audi R8 LMS GT3.
The weather conditions at Nordschleife were extremely bad due to a heavy rain that made very difficult the development of the race, to the point that the it was interrupted from 22 pm to 8 am.
In qualifying, Michele and his team-mates, Kim Luis Schramm, Joules Gounon e Frank Stippler, placed in twelfth position and started the race with a rhythm that allowed them to stay within the first ten position.
After the forced stop for the severe weather conditions, Michele’s Audi #5 started again with a good pace that could have allowed him to finish the race in the top ten. Unfortunately, just two hours before the end, the axle shaft’s break forced the retirement.
“It was a demanding 24 Hours due to weather conditions. Rained a lot and at the beginning of the race we had even more difficulty because, besides the rain we had to manage with the oil that a Lamborghini spilled on the track. So, in the first section of the circuit, I drove carefully to avoid the car sliding. The engineer via radio repeatedly recommended us to concentrate and take the car to the morning. The Nürburgring is a difficult circuit and the 24 Hours has hidden danger, but with this condition it was even worse.”
Michele expresses his complain about the beautiful result vanished: “In heavy wet track condition, the Audi had problem with the traction compared to Mercedes, Porsche and BMW, while with damp track and dry-wet tyres things were better and we had a good pace. In this situation, I made excellent stint and we could finish the race near the podium. The damage we had was unexpected and anomalous, a fault that doesn’t happen very often , a surprise for engineers too.”
The challenge with the Nordschleife is open.
“I had fantastic team-mates and my team has a winning organization, I hope to come back also next year with this combination. Apart from the difficulties we had, the Nürburgring 24 Hours is always a beautiful race and this year it was particularly hard.”
Got over the dissatisfaction to step on the podium, Michele is already on track to train for the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. Last 29 September there were three official training sessions, which were the prologue of the 24 Ore di Spa (24 e 25 October).
Michele will challenge for this race at the wheel of the HRT Haupt Racing team’s Mercedes AMG GT3.
Michele is expected at Monza (9-11 October) for the fourth round of the European Le Mans Series, where is the leader together with the Proton Competition team-mates, Alessio Picariello and Christian Ried and the rivals of the Kessel Racing team (Perel and Broniszewski)
