At the fifth and last race of the Sprint Cup, the Mercedes driver wants to end up in the point ranks once again

After business now comes pleasure for Fabian Schiller. The 20-year-old race driver from Troisdorf already won the Silver-Cup of the Blancpain GT Series for the fourth time in a row at the end of August on the Hungaroring in Budapest and thereby prematurely secured the title of champion of the young drivers’ category. Now the fifth and last sprint race is going to take place on the Nurburgring and Schiller not only wants to finish the season with a flawless victory series in his class but also wants to climb further up on the overall list of rankings.

His premiere season with a Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the team HTP Motorsport from Altendiez took Fabian Schiller cross-country through Europe these past months. After the two kick-off races of the sprint- and endurance-cups of the Blanpain Series in Italy (Misano and Monza), he first travelled to the British Isles to start at the two races in Brands Hatch and Silverstone. From there, the team travelled on to Belgian Zolder and Le Castellet at the French Côte d’Azur. The following return to Belgium marked the season highlight of the popular racing series for GT3-sports cars, because more than 60 cars competed against each other on the Grand Prix track of Spa-Francorchamps at the legendary 24h-race. Lastly, the Bonn born driver successfully started in Hungary and is now really looking forward to his start in front of a local audience at the only German event of the series on the Nurburgring.

Of course Fabian Schiller knows the track in the Eifel, located just about 70km away from his hometown, better than any other race track in the world, because nowhere else has he driven so many laps. Only two weeks ago he started as a guest for the team GetSpeed Performance within the framework of the sixth race of the VLN long-distance championship on the northern loop and proved his extraordinary talent at his first start in the hard-fought Manthey-Porsche GT4-class with a clear class victory as well.

The track version of the Nurburgring that is going to be driven next weekend at the Blancpain-Series is partly new to the Rhinelander though, because contrary to most national championships, this time the participants don’t just drive on the short configuration but on the complete Grand Prix track. One lap is 5148m, which first leads through the Mercedes Arena and then down to the Dunlop-turn. All in all, the drivers have to master 17 bends, seven left, ten right. The fastest lap time of last year was 1:55,996minutes and was driven in July. It’s going to be exciting to see if any of the sports-car aces can undermatch this on Sunday. The weather is going to play a crucial role though too, because at this time of year there is always a risk of rain in the Eifel.

„Just as for every other driver, it’s very special for me to drive a race on my home track. My family as well as a lot of friends and partners are going to be present next weekend and hold their thumbs for me on location”, Schiller explains. “But once I’m in the car I’m going to be fully concentrated on showing a performance as flawless as possible. Together with my partner Jules Szymkowiak I have already won the Silver-Cup prematurely due to four victories at the sprint races. Of course I want to be on top of the podium again at the last race. But to be honest, I’m even looking a little further. In the end it has to be my goal to play a part in the fight for the overall victory as well.”

The 35 registered cars are already going to start driving on the track on Friday morning at 9:40am and are going to use the 80-minutes-long free training to work out a good chassis calibration for their sports cars. A second free training over the same distance is going to take place in the afternoon at 2pm. Saturday morning things are going to get serious then: The best starting positions are going to be set at qualifying. Points will be given out at the Blancpain Sprint Cup twice. First, the 60-minute qualifying race is going to take place on Saturday afternoon at 2pm, while the main race (also 1h) is planned for Sunday, 3:30pm. All sessions are going to be broadcast live on the YouTube-channel of the series again.

Text: F. Wagner / Schiller Motorsport – Fotos: Blancpain-GT-Serie