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GT Masters: Christian Engelhart finishes season with a podium

Nürburg, 11-07-2021

Unusual finish for the ADAC GT Masters - but Christian Engelhart didn't let his successful autumn course get in the way of the season finale of the German GT Championship, ending the final race weekend of the season on the podium.

With third place in Saturday's race, Christian Engelhart and his Porsche Team 75 colleague Thomas Preining once again proved the duo's strong performance in the Porsche 911 GT3 R. Already in free practice and qualifying at the final weekend at the Nürburgring, it was clear how the squad led by team boss Timo Bernhard has developed into a package capable of winning over the year.

"Unfortunately, we had a technical problem in qualifying that prevented me from driving as many laps as originally planned. Although my tires were still too cold, I managed to qualify our Porsche in P8." The difficulty at this time of year is getting the tires up to working temperature with the temperatures around freezing. Compared to the weather conditions in summer, this can take up to two laps longer. Nevertheless, Christian managed to handle this situation.

With a perfect start, the Starnberg driver moved up from eighth on the grid to fourth and was able to maintain this position until the car was handed over to his teammate Thomas Preining at the pit stop. With the very well-timed stop, the duo managed to improve their position further and ultimately finish third - another podium finish this season.

"We had a fast car and I was able to hand it over to my teammate in a very good position. Thomas' job was then to drive home the 3rd place safely for us," said Christian.

In the final race of the season, the duo had more luck in qualifying and once again managed a good grid position with sixth place. At the race start, however, Thomas was involved in a collision through no fault of his own, which led to an early retirement. "Of course, this is annoying, since the podium was also in prospect for us in the race. But I'm positive about what we've achieved this season in the ADAC GT Masters. We've improved considerably since the middle of the season and have been consistently competing for podium places. Our performance in the last three races was really strong!"

With a positive feeling, Christian now goes into the winter break and will resume training early for the year 2022. "Finally, I would like to thank all my partners and sponsors, of course the team and my teammates for this year and wish a healthy and good end of the year. See you soon!"