06/28/2011

• ContiForceTeam finished the World’s toughest race with the road legal track day tire, ContiForceContact

Hannover/Nürburgring, 28 June 2011. High-spirited elation and relief for the ContiForceTeam at the Nürburgring. After 24 hours of racing, the Continental Artega was 70^th to cross the finish line. An eleventh place finish in its class, one of the most powerful engine capacity and horsepower classes (SP7) – not bad for the car and tire premiere at the world’s toughest race.

“The performance was perfect. With the exception of two minor incidents in the first few hours of the race, we didn’t have any problems at all. And, with the mixed weather conditions in the early part of the race, we were able to take advantage of the exceptional quality of the road legal ContiForceContact tires. The main advantage of the ContiForceContact tires where that where many teams had to change from rain tires to intermediates and then to slicks, we could just drive on”, commented Uwe Nittel, both satisfied and relieved after crossing the finish line.

Successfully taking on the challenge with the ContiForceTeam was extremely important to Nittel, the former runner-up World rally champion, who was closely involved in developing the event tire. “I am absolutely delighted that the tires performed as well as they did. It proves that we were right in everything we did. The ContiForceContact is a sports tire that performs as brilliantly on the road as it does on the track”, continued Nittel.

Continuous race progress after midnight

Uwe Nittel brought the 300 hp Artega GT from place 130 to place 72 after just a few laps. Then a problem with the nearside drive shaft cost the team about 20 minutes and a few positions. The Artega mechanics broke out in a sweat just one more time, when a defect on the underside of the car was found during a scheduled stop at midnight. But this challenge was also addressed quickly and from that moment on, Uwe Nittel, Uwe Krumscheid, Dierk Möller-Sonntag and Christian Gebhardt were able to drive on with only the scheduled stops in the pits. On track, all drivers performed well pushing it to the limit within the safety margins continuously through to the finish line. Lap times of 11mins 30secs were achieved during the night and 10mins 30secs during the day.