The regular season of German International VLN (Nürburgring – Nordschleife endurance races) has started last Saturday, March 27th 2010. Ukrainian Tsunami RT takes part in it for the second comprehensive season. Although this season program already lists two teams crews: Basic driving Porsche 997 GT3 Cup, and Junior, racing Ford Fiesta ST.

The race eve was marked by two teams’ significant events. Firstly, Russia born Aleksey Basov, the one suffered serious leg injury in January, returned to the Porsche squad. Secondly, the Junior crew was announced – 2010 VLN first stage opening was after Ukrainian Aleksey Yatsyuk on Ford (the winner of selective program – “The Tsunami choice – speed of the future!”) along with Russia’s’ Nikolay Zhuravlev.     

Tricky weather has become the mess factor at qualifying – the drying track results changed rapidly every single minute. The track incidents followed by, so one restricted Aleksey Basov, Aleksander Gayday and Andrey Kruglik to accomplish qualifying – after crash with one of the contestants, the time remaining till the race had to be devoted to damage repairs. Thus, as the result, Russian-Ukrainian Porsche team was to start from the last line in its class group by gained time of 79th in overalls. Junior duo of Yatsyuk and Zhuravlev that debuted on German track, run through qualifying to 153th in overalls and fourth in the class.

The race, despite unfavorable starting grid went much better – both crews finished successfully (almost one third of participants failed by miscellaneous reasons). Basov along with Gayday and Kruglik managed to fight for dozens of positions and accomplished at P25th at overalls and 8th at Cup2 (monoclass of Porsche 996/997 GT3 Cup, version before 2009). The debutants Yatsyuk and Zhuravlev as well managed to keep pace at all four hours race distance and set P98 in overalls (third place at SP2 class).

Photo: Werner Röder