Aditya Patel Wins In Nurburgring

Aditya Patel’s performance in the 2010 Volkswagen Scirocco Cup has gone from good to better. However last weekend in Nurburgring, he scored his best result ever – a race win! He tells us more on iSport.

Nurburgring never fails to throw out some surprises! It had always been a dream for me to race on this historic race track and last year this dream came true. Although it wasn't the best result then, I knew I would come back another day to tame this legendary circuit. So this year I went back there all set to put in some results!

Practice went off pretty well. At the end of the thirty minute session I was only a tenth off the fastest time! So, I sat with the engineer and after analyzing the data, we knew we could do this thing! Unless of course, somebody else found more time.

Come qualifying, I set in a lap which I thought was pretty quick and pulled into the pits to calm the nerves. It so happened, that lap wasn't good enough! With 15 minutes to go I was down in 7th and I couldn't figure out where I was losing three tenths of a second! That's a lot! Back out and on my first flying lap, Bang! Pole position! So I just bided my time and tried new things till I decided to do another lap just to secure my position. Straight away I was a tenth faster. Job done. Wait, that's only half the job done! There was a race that evening!

adityaliftscup The tension mounts, the butterflies begin and nothing can stop them till the 5 red lights going off! Right from the word go I knew I had the pace to stay in front. After building up a comfortable lead, the safety car came out! Nothing comes easy right? At this point I had Maciek Steinhof, the championship leader, right behind, waiting to pounce on me. Again, a mistake by me would go unforgiven. After the re-start, I put my head down and just focussed on getting to the finish line. There it was, the chequered flag. Finally I won! It was the most amazing feeling ever, especially to win at the Nurburgring from pole to flag! I literally have no more words to describe the rest of the day after that point.

Come sunday, race 2 was going to be action packed without doubt! A reverse grid for the top eight on an extremely competetive field is asking for pure enterainment and racing. Sure enough, everybody got what they came for. Spectacular action! Starting from eight, my aim was to get as high up without doing anything stupid. A bad start (stupid mistake) meant that I was sandwiched from both sides which quite obviously led to a huge accident on the main straight and I managed to get away with only a damaged steering. From then on, my aim was to bring the car home. As I found out, it's not like a race driver to do that! Instinct took over and within a few laps I was in third, but with damage aleady done, I couldn't hold on for long and had a hard battle for 4th place along with four other drivers. In the end, 4th it was and I couldn't have asked for a better weekend!

Now, second in the standings, I have so much more to work for. I'm enjoying this year more than ever before and hope to continue racing like this for as long as possible!