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Under blue skies, in summer temperatures we kicked off our racing weekend here at Assen, The Netherlands: Round 2 of the Dutch Historic GT and Touring Car Championship by Dantuma. The field includes one other ’74 RSR, of Gerd Rijper as the rest of the Porsche participants are (re-)building cars and engines. They will trickle in again over the course of the season and into the next year.

Qualifying happened in the morning and I took pole with a fastest ever 1.58.5 lap time, 3.5 seconds faster than the car had ever been on this track.

The Hulk as undergone quite a bit of work over the spring and Lex has changed the hubs, disks, pads, sway bars and the exhaust. The car sits on 16inch wheels now and drives even more sturdily than before. Actually it drives like a dream.

The new exhaust (our own prototype) has created more room for outflow and has taken off all the high pitch noises. At Zandvoort I had to short shift the final long sweeper into 5th, to avoid noise penalties. Here at Assen noise surveillance is even tighter and I had no issues at all.

All these changes help take you to a place where you can focus on the driving and not worry about any technical issues. You would think…. Bleeding the brakes in the morning I apparently damaged the brake cylinder and it means I need to anticipate brake pressure needed by pumping the brake pedal ahead of a turn. Despite this slight nuisance I managed to win the first race.

Unfortunately Marcel Frijlink in his super fast Escort could not participate due to a failed gearbox, but he was present again for the afternoon race. He had to start at the back and after 6 laps he was on my tail. Several laps followed where I defended my position with vigour, but in the 10th lap Marcel overtook me at the end of the straight. In the very technical complex that follows the finish straight I managed to out-manoeuvre Marcel and tear away again onto the back straight.

I could barely defend my line and coming out of the Gert Timmer chicane, into the final lap, Marcel once more overtook me but could not fully pass. He then start to push the line all the way to the right side of the right hand corner that follows the straight and left me no quarters. My left front wheel hit his right rear wheel and Marcel spun away to the left and I barely dodged a tyre stack that protects the corner. I could finish the race in first and Marcel limped home.

The race director’s verdict was that Marcel’s move had endangered me, but the real lesson I drew was that we both need to be more aware of each others positions, now that Marcel is being challenged in his supremacy and we’ll vie for first more regularly.

Gerd and his white 74 RSR scored his first podium overall in our class and we hope to see him get closer all the time for proper R Gruppe battle scenes up front!

That made two firsts and the lead in the championship. Today we have one more race in the afternoon and I’ll include photo’s with the post that follows!