It was a wild weekend for 17-year-old Simon Reicher. The Circuit Park Zandvoort hosted the ADAC TCR Germany’s fourth of seven events, taking place in the supporting program of the ADAC GT Masters. For the young Austrian, who considers Zandvoort his home track, the first step was to minimize the time difference to his role model and coach Jaap van Lagen. Reicher, who has been driving under the direction of the touring car pro for some months now, was three seconds slower per lap than van Lagen at the TCR Benelux race in Zandvoort some weeks ago. Reducing this time difference was therefore at the top of Reicher’s personal to-do list. “There’s no talking my way out of it. Three seconds is three too many. No matter where I place this weekend, first I’ll compare my lap times with Jaap’s,” smiles the youngster.

But before the Austrian started comparing lap times, he had to find the perfect set-up for his Audi RS3 LMS Ultra; a top tier field with 40 competitors from 11 nations posed a challenging task. Good intentions and preparation alone were not enough, though. Already during the qualifying session, the Certainty pilot faced bad luck. “It just didn’t work out the way I expected it to. The session was constantly red flagged. That is really disappointing. You leave the pits to start your out-lap, warm up the tires for a lap or two, only to have your fast-lap discontinued by a red flag. There are simply too many drivers, who don’t seem to know what they are doing. The second red flag was caused by a driver, who just rolled by the marshal exit and parked his car 50 meters later, smack in a quick passage. How should one plan for these situations in advance? Throughout the entire qualifying, I was only able to drive four free laps. Unfortunately, those weren’t even consecutive laps and also not at the beginning of the session, when my tires were still in their optimal performance window. That’s frustrating because I definitely had the potential to finish in the top ten of my group,” explains the seventh grade student of the Werkschulheim Felbertal. On the bright side of things, adding up the best sector times from all of Reicher’s laps yielded a theoretical best time of 1.47.600, just barely a second slower than Jaap van Lagen.

The first race of the weekend on Saturday afternoon took place under unusual circumstances. “One cannot even call that a race. We were following the Safety Car the whole time – only four laps were driven under race conditions – an unsatisfying experience,” Reicher comments on Saturday’s race. Nevertheless, the youngster delivered a fantastic performance, bringing home his Audi in 10th place, thereby scoring important championship points and winning the rookie category! The final race on Sunday painted a similar picture as on Saturday. Several yellow flag phases made overtaking nearly impossible. Moreover, technical issues interrupted the radio contact between Reicher and his racing engineer about half way on through the race. “What a mess. You’re following the Safety Car and receive no information from the pits regarding the restart,” reports an annoyed Reicher. Rightly so: when all other drivers ahead are aware of the upcoming restart and unexpectedly accelerate into racing mode, then one can lose serious ground. Despite the weekend not going as planned with several accidents, numerous yellow and red flags, some self-inflicted mistakes, and a disappointing 20th place in the second race, Simon Reicher’s performance curve constantly increases from event to event.

Already in 10 days he will be back in the cockpit of his Audi RS3 LMS Ultra at the next ADAC TCR Germany event. The sprint circuit of the Nürburgring will be hosting the series in the supporting program of the ADAC GT Masters.