For the 4th round of the ADAC GT Masters Championship the Mercedes-AMG-Team is optimistic for a good result while Indy Dontje is looking forward to race on home territorial.
The Circuit Park Zandvoort, hosting the seventh and eighth race of this year’s ADAC GT Masters championship, is one of the last natural racetracks in Europe. Located 30 km west of Amsterdam, Zandvoort offers in its 4,3 km long circuit everything racing fans are loving. Many mid- and fast-speed corners, some of them blind, plus a bumpy, aggressive and sandy tarmac.
A track which should at least in theory fit quite well to the cars of Mercedes-AMG Team HTP Motorsport. The team from Altendiez in Rheinland-Palatinate hopes for a successful weekend including a lot of points with their two Mercedes-AMG GT3s, showing their particular strength on this high-downforce track. Both cars will try their best to leave some bad luck at the beginning of the season behind. Patrick Assenheimer (25, Heilbronn) and Maximilian Götz (31, Uffenheim) are currently ranked on P12, while Marvin Kirchhöfer (23, Leipzig) and Indy Dontje (24, Netherlands) in the MANNFILTER car are one place behind on P13 in the championship.
For Dontje it is literally a race on home territorial, with his hometown Alkmaar just 40 km away from the circuit. “I am happy to drive here again after all the races in other countries”, says Dontje. “Zandvoort is a great place and has a really nice but challenging circuit with no run-off areas. If you make a mistake you can easily end up in the wall or in the gravel, pretty old-school. At least there is new tarmac, which makes it less bumpy and raises the grip level.”
Dontje is pretty optimistic for the race at the North Sea. “Our Mercedes-AMG GT3 was really fast at the test here. Qualifying will be key again. At Red Bull Ring, Marvin and me we both made mistakes in qualifying, which pretty much destroyed all chances for a podium, even though we were fast enough in the race. Additionally, overtaking is really hard in Zandvoort. There are just one or two spots, where you could try to overtake, but your opponent also knows to defend there.”
HTP Team principal Norbert Brückner is also looking forward to race at the North Sea coast. “Zandvoort is a track, where our Mercedes-AMG GT3 should be pretty good. Especially because you need high downforce and top speed is not as important as it were at Red Bull Ring. Nevertheless, it requires a very good setup of the car, which also is not too hard on tires. If you mess up qualifying, you are almost without any chance to have a good result in the race. Only the teams without mistakes at all will be rewarded at the end – and this is what we are trying to achieve this weekend.
Both 1-hour-races with mandatory pitstop will be shown live on SPORT1 (race start on Saturday at 13.45 and on Sunday at 13:15).