The Rally of Staden was the first rally of 2019 for Andy Lefevere and Marc Noppe and also the debut of the long-awaited Porsche 997 GT3. Beforehand, Andy said he would not look at the result and wanted to use the race mainly to make the necessary adjustments to the car.
“On the first test it could already have been over for us,” the Yprauto business manager told us. On a straight it went wrong at high speed… “I had way too much brake pressure at the back and when braking down it was as if Marc pulled my handbrake… “
The Porsche went into the field at well over 180 per hour and returned to the track after a few pirouettes. “We were really lucky, it could have ended much worse… When I got back on track we heard we had a flat tire and when replacing it we also had problems with the jack. We lost 7 minutes, but the main thing was that we were still on track.”
The rest of the day was used to further tune the Porsche. “We restarted from scratch again, because the setup we had was worthless above 100 mph, the car felt way too limp. I think we now have a good basis to work on. Before the ConXion Omloop van Vlaanderen we will do another test, especially when coming out of the cut-offs there is still work to do… After all, the Porsche is not an easy car to tune.”
The spectators in Staden were also particularly enthusiastic about the new car. “Our Porsche was the first to be equipped with the new exhaust that will soon become mandatory and is also a lot quieter, therefore it seemed to some that we were not going full speed. But when you see that at the end we were just behind the first R5 cars with our rear-wheel drive Porsche, you know it’s going fast…” concludes Andy.
