EU3: Oschersleben: Callaway Competition weekend summary

Callaway Competition progresses at Oschersleben

Oschersleben (Germany) Callaway Competition made some progess at the third race weekend of the FIA GT3 European championship at the MotorsportArena Oschersleben in Germany. After Callaway Competition had some bad luck with unsuitable "balance of performace" decisions for the first two meeting, the home race in Germany brought valuable points. Juergen von Gartzen (Germany) and reigning European GT3 champion Arnaud Peyroles (France) scored their first points of the season in the Callaway Competition built Corvette Z06.R GT3 "Made in Leingarten".

Before the racing weekend at Oschersleben, overdue corrections in the "balance of performance" were carried out by the FIA for the Corvette. The Callaway Competition built Corvette were allowed to race at the twisty track in East Germany 50kg lighter and with a harder tire compound then previously used.

In the first race on Saturday, Gartzen/Peyroles started 14. and nearly missed a top-10 finish with rank 11. In the second race on Sunday, both Callaway drivers could improve. They started from eleventh position on the grid and finally finished seventh. "The car feels now better and more consistent, but we still have a lot of work to do," Juergen von Gartzen noticed after the two races. "We are on the right way. But have to do now a lot of finetuning with our new tyres, the car is not perfectly balanced yet."

Callaway Competition head Ernst Woehr had mixed feelings after the weekend: "We make small steps forwards. Both of our drivers have done well and didn't made any mistake. With the hard tyres, we are not as quick as with the soft compound, but we can mange now to race until the finish without have to worry about the tyres. We have to use the summer break and have to go testing to adapt the tyres to our car. The now permitted corrections in the "balance of performance" is a first step in the right direction, but as very late one as half of the season is gone now. Our whole development in the first half of the year was useless. At the most unfavourable time, in the middle of the current season, we have to go for expensive testing, only because we were disadvantaged at the season start by a wrong "balance of performance"."

Bad luck suffered in Oschersleben Wolfgang Kaufmann (Germany) and Luca Moro (Italy) in the second Corvette Z06.R GT3 entered by Callaway Competition. In an accident in the free practise, Moro damaged the Corvette. Moro stayed uninjured, but a repair on site was not possible. Thus Callaway Competition could start only with one Corvette.

-credit: cc