Nicolas Armindo took full advantage of his guest drive in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, scoring a win to add to his pole position at Hockenheim in the seventh round of the championship.
“What else could I have wished for? As a guest starter I put my car on pole and won the race!” exclaimed the jubilant Frenchman. “It was simply a perfect weekend. I messed up the start slightly when I changed to second gear too early. Still I was fast enough to win the sprint to the first corner, and then I easily controlled the race. I didn't go particularly flat out because I wanted to be easy on the tyres. But every time Jan put the pressure on I had to accelerate. Still, my win was never under threat.”
At the end of the race the Al Faisal Lechner Racing driver was 2.2 seconds clear of the Veltins backed Porsche of Jan Seyffarth, with German Christian Engelhart in third, taking his best ever finish in the one-make series. Seyffarth had been third after the early exchanges, but took second from Engelhart in a textbook Hockenheim overtaking move at the hairpin on the far side of the track.
“Finally it worked again,” said Seyffarth. “Our home race was the perfect place for my comeback to the podium. Obviously there was some luck involved, but that's how it goes. Towards the end I let off the pace slightly because I noticed that I had no chance to catch Nicholas. I've made up some ground in the championship and hope things continue like this.”
The race turned on events on the first lap when title contenders Nick Tandy and Rene Rast tried to run three abreast into turn two on the outside of Engelhart. With contact Engelhart made it around the tight right hander – though he initially feared his car too had been damaged – but both Tandy and Rast ran wide, bumping each other as they re-joined the track, haemorrhaging places – Rast dropping outside the top ten while a slow Tandy could only struggle back to the pits.
Rast, the championship leader attempted to mount a fight back, making progress into the lower reaches of the top ten before he ran wide in the Parabolica, running out of kerb Rast's car was launched briefly airborne causing the flat tyre, doubtless with other damage, that ended his race early.
Pointless weekends for both the title front runners presented a golden opportunity to Lechner Racing's Stefan Rosina to re-include himself in the title fight. The Slovakian finished just off the podium in fourth seeing him move to third in the championship chase, just a point behind Tandy, who lies 16 adrift of Rast.
Former WTCC driver Jaap van Lagen finished fifth ahead of Norbert Siedler and Martin Ragginger – another man making his Supercup debut, despite being junior driver in Porsche's works stable – in seventh. Sebastiaan Bleekemolen, Matt Halliday and veteran Patrick Huisman completed the points paying positions.
