NISSAN reigned supreme in France last week by dominating round seven of the FIA GT1 Championship at Paul Ricard.
The German duo of Michael Krumm and Lucas Luhr lead from the beginning to end and put themselves back on top of the GT1 Drivers’ Championship standings in the process.
The no.21 Sumo Power GT of David Brabham and Jamie Campbell-Walter clinched an excellent fourth place after making up seven grid positions during the course of the race, whilst there were also good drives from Enrique Bernoldi and Nick Catsburg in the no.20 car.
The only sour note of the afternoon for Nissan came with the retirement of the luckless no.22 JRM, which encountered suspension problems late on in the race when challenging for third place.
Speaking afterwards, Krumm said: ‘It’s a brilliant feeling to get a double victory here at Paul Ricard and jump back into the lead in the Drivers’ Championship – the GT-R felt really great out there, and it handled very comfortably throughout my stint behind the wheel.
‘The most important thing for me today was to have a good getaway and get through the first corner without an accident, which I did. As expected, Tomas (Enge) in the following no.7 Aston gave me a very hard time during the first few laps, and it took a while to get the tyre pressures up.
‘However, after about three or four laps I found the grip and I was able to start building a little bit of a gap: I wanted to make as big a gap as I could for the driver change in case anything went wrong. Overall it really has been a perfect weekend – now it’s on to the great unknown of China, which we’ll obviously be approaching with a lot of confidence.’
Luhr added: ‘Once again, Michael and I need to thank the whole team for their hard work, and for giving us the wonderful tools with which we can win races. Two wins is a great feeling!’
Round eight of the GT1 World Championship, in Ordos, China will take place on September 3-4.