NLS Class Championship Secured

Josh and Dany win the VT2-FWD class championship with one round to spare.

Friday testing started out in the usual fashion, with excited guests joining Josh and Dany in the car for "taxi laps" and, to make it even more special, a number of the crew members from Mertens Motorsport also got in the passenger seat for some laps of the Green Hell.

Heavy rain on Friday gave Josh the perfect opportunity to gain valuable wet weather experience on the Nordschleife ahead of qualifying and race day. He got up to speed quickly in changeable conditions and set competitive times against those on track at the same time. 

Come Saturday morning, the rainy Eifel weather persisted. Dany drove the opening laps of qualifying and set the pace early on to top the timesheets. With the rain getting heavier throughout the session, others were unable to improve on their times and Mertens Motorsport took their sixth pole position of the season.

Dany was in for the start of the race, and after being compromised in the opening corners, dropped to third place. He quickly set about pressuring the leading cars in a great fight for the podium places, but unfortunately, on the last lap of the opening stint, a technical problem forced him to stop on track. The car was recovered back to the pits, and although they were a lap down on the leaders, the team knew that anything could happen with three hours left to go in the race. As Dany headed back out onto the track, he immediately started setting competitive sector times again, but the luck of the #491 car went from bad to worse, as an incident at Adenauer Forst sent him into the barriers as he was overtaking slower traffic.

As ever, once the car made it back to the pits, everyone at Mertens Motorsport quickly got to work to send Josh out for the final two hours of the race, albeit three laps down. Despite handling issues stemming from the crash, Josh continued to deliver highly competitive lap times and reached the chequered flag in sixth place. It was a race of "what could have been" but thankfully P6 earned Josh and Dany enough points to win the VT2-FWD class title.

The misfortunes of the race have eliminated the team from overall title contention but they still lead the Production Car Trophy Championship with one race to go and will be pushing flat out to add that title to their class championship success.

Looking back on the weekend, Josh had this to say: "I'm over the moon to have won the VT2-FWD class title; it really means a lot to have won the championship in such a competitive class and it goes to show the effort that the team and I have been putting in. Obviously, it has been a weekend of mixed emotions; I know we only had a small chance at the overall championship but I’m still gutted to be out of the running for that. We'll continue to give it everything heading into the last race to make sure we finish the season on a high and take home the Production Car Trophy."

Be sure to follow Josh on social media to see how him and the team get on at the final race.

Instagram: @joshhislopmotorsport

Facebook: Josh Hislop Motorsport