Seventh place in Race 1 at Nürburgring for HB Racing

The fifth round of the ADAC GT Masters took place at the Nürburgring over the weekend, a week before the Zandvoort outing. After finishing just outside the top ten in the Netherlands, Luca Ludwig and Sebastian Asch in the 488 GT3 of HB Racing completed the 60-minute race in seventh place. Under constant threat of rain and buffeted by strong winds, the cars of the German series fought it out on the short configuration of the Nürburgring, which facilitated duels and passes. After securing fifth place on the grid in qualifying, Luca Ludwig defended his position on the inside of the first turn but, caught up in a fiercely competitive group, yielded to Jahn's Corvette. The Ferrari driver, with no-one else threatening on his tail, recorded consistent lap times comparable with the leaders, without putting the tyres under pressure. The unexpectedly fierce battle for third prompted the German to increase his pace, slipping into the wake of the Corvette and Niederhauser in the Audi. One minute after the stroke of mid-race, Ludwig returned to the pits to hand over to Sebastian Asch, who went on track just as Christopher Mies' Audi arrived. The Ferrari driver tried to hold him off but had to give way to his rival, thus slipping into seventh place. Asch didn't have much time to mount a counter-attack on the Audi because of the comeback of Maximilian Götz who, ten minutes from the end, passed the Ferrari, slowed down in the meantime by Schreiner. Asch finally broke the deadlock to overtake the Audi and cross the finish line in seventh position, the best result of the season for the HB Racing pair. The finish in Race-1 confirmed the Austrian team’s improvement and gave hope for Sunday’s round at the Nürburgring.