Tetsu Ikuzawa’s 935 wins at Oldtimer GP Nurburgring

Last weekend my son Daan, Jan de Boer, editor in chief of RS Porsche Magazine and Marcel Cornelius, owner of the Clockwork Orange 911 S/T rep, took off on our annual pilgrimage to the AvD Oldtimer Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. This event always strikes me as the German version of Le Mans Classic. The German scene for historic racing offers incredible depth in terms of rare cars and quantity of people willing to thrash them around a race track. The Germans just don’t make as much of a splash or spectacle out of it as the LMC organization does. Typical German modesty.

Due to a seemingly endless traffic jam on A61 we arrived whilst the early seventies Batmobiles and 911 RSR’s and 935s were in their race. So I was quite miffed at having missed that race in large part… The race was won by Klaus Ludwig, famed Porsche employee and race driver, in the K3 (Kremer 935) which was driven in 1980 at Le Mans by our new found friend Tetsu Ikuzawa (see John Glynn’s posting of last weekend).

Porsche 935 Le Mans 1980; Tetsu Ikuzawa; TwinSpark Racing Classic Porsche parts

Tetsu Ikuzawa's 1980 Porsche 935 Le Mans K3

Porsche 935 Le Mans 1980; Tetsu Ikuzawa; TwinSpark Racing Classic Porsche parts

Tetsu Ikuzawa's 1980 Porsche 935 Le Mans K3

In fifth place we found Eberhardt “Ebi” Baunach in his Jaegermeister K3. Ebi bought some of our WEVO equipment at Techno Classica and we caught up with him after his race. He felt the competition had been intense and he had had to fight for every inch of tarmac. So much for taking it easy with historically significant material… Just the way we like it at TwinSpark Racing!!!

There had been a serious shunt by the 934,5 of Chris Stahl in the tenth lap of his German Race Championship Revival. We don’t know what happened, but the picture shows a wheel center broken out…. Sad picture. Lex and I had raced in the same event against this car at Spa’s 250 Miles endurance, where they shared the pitbox next to us.

Porsche 934,5 TwinSpark Racing Classic Porsche parts

Chris Stahl's 934,5 dropped out perhaps due to broken wheel center...

We then met with Theo van Gammeren, an enthousiastic historic racer in the Netherlands for many years and former president of the Dutch Historic Racing Club. He was the only Dutch entry with an early 911 in the Oldtimer Grand Prix. Qualifying as second out of 7 1965 FIA spec 911s, he was seconds faster a lap than the rest of his peers, showing a well prepared car and a lot of track experience!

Historic Racing 911 1965 FIA; TwinSpark Racing Classic Porsche parts

Theo van Gammeren in front of his Duel built 1965 Porsche 911 FIA racer

Having had a chat for a while, Theo offered to fire up his car, which was running, by exception, on open exhaust. Needless to say our posse had its 911 engine sound fix for the week!

Always a nice event to visit, but next year we’ll be there to race ourselves!

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