First race of the year, with guest driver Jan Lammers in the brand new Saker Rapx #01 and a starting field of 17 Sakers! After a great day the SPAA05 cars ended 5th and 9th overal.

Zandvoort - DNRT - Saker Challenge Race 1 - 04-10 First race of the year. SPAA05.com had Jan Lammers drive in the brand new Saker Rapx #01 which just had the shakedown the day before. I myself was driving the #57 car. With good weather and a starting field of 17! Sakers, this was bound to be a great day.
We knew the car was fast as 1,50's were accomplished just 2-3 weeks ago. However the car was equipped with new/stronger springs which had quite an effect on the cars handling. In the morning practice I could not get below 1.56, which was about 4 seconds off the pace set by the top 3. Jan Lammers in the mean time was still getting used to the car.
After some suspension tuning a 1.53.5 was achieved during qualifying, still at least 2 seconds slower then quicker drivers of Team Jadbalja, and just up to a second slower than the numbers 3,4 and 5. So I had to start from 6th place, a bit disappointed as I could go much faster. But knowing the car wasn't set up perfectly I was convinced I had the chance to move up some positions during the race. Jam Lammers still had much difficulty with the handling of the car and ended up last on the grid.
I had a good start in Race 1 but was hindered by a nearly bogged down car from team King Kong and I lost about 4 places before the first corner already. Then I missed some aggressiveness in the first round and I fell back quite a bit, and was actually last for a moment. Still after just 8 rounds I managed to end up 6th agin!! See the videos below for the first race!





Jan Lammers got some serious adjustments to the car and at the end of the first race was already posting 1.55's, and was ready to actually compete in the next race.
Race 2 started out decent and as I nearly was about to overtake car #14 driven by Floris-Jan Hekker the race was neutralized with a Code 60 and eventually red flagged, finishing 6th.
The final endurance race was not as exciting as the previous two races. After overtaking Hekker at the Hunserug in the first round I had a good fight with Ron from Team Divinet who came flying past me at the start. Afterwards I simply could not get any closer to the guys in front of me and so after 60 minutes of driving I ended up finishing 5th. Jan Lammers who got the hold of things ended 7th just 1 second after the Divinet car!
At the end of the day I was 5th overall, which was ok but since my pace wasn't there I was not entirely happy with the result. Of course the close racing and overtaking was great fun and it was also quite an opportunity to meet Jan Lammers, who is a genuine nice guy and we were honored to have him on the team for today.