Oldtimer Grand Prix Hamburg 2003
by Thomas Sasse, April 2003
Foreword
After a very long period of absence from the Oldtimer Grand Prix Hamburg
[rumors say that he was last seen there at the beginning of the 90ies!],
and heartily welcomed, Tommy Becker arrived on Thursday but more to spend
some time at the different spots of interest like the "Alster", the habour,
the famous "Fischmarkt", ... and not to get some extra practice hours.
As a member of the "26D-gang" he was accompanied by his "teammates"
Johannes Hiltrop and Thomas Sasse [me] on Friday, unluckily
Joerg Rehse and Martin Wiese weren't able to come to the
"secret capital of the north."
Friday
On Friday some "displaced persons" arrived already at lunchtime
to start practice on the 5-lane "Greyhound" track - World Champion
Dieter Jens swiftly came by car [to pick up the family hours later from the
train station], just because every single minute counts to find a good set-up.
Formula 1 (hardbody)
As always racing started on Friday evening with this "fun class".
Accepting that the gearbox problems of my
Auto Union hillclimb car
[which can be found on this site as well] aren't easy to solve the
car retired to the show case area for the time being. The new F1 Lotus
56B "Goldleaf" turbine car was assembled with a scratch brass
chassis that was build especially with this track in mind.
With Uwe "Dr. Evermann" Drevermann's help of manual lap
counting on one car that didn't activate the track's timing system,
we always got the right lap numbers. Equiped with Martin Wiese's 2002
winning Lotus 56 Johannes Hiltrop was the one looking for victory.
But the "Goldleaf" car was nearly as fast and with a
softer motor and smooth handling it outperformed the Indy turbine
easily and everybody could have won the race with this car. When
the last second ticked away Matthias Parke came in on 2nd place
[of course his McLaren M7A lost - "same procedure as every year" -
all his wings during the race] with 130.52 laps, leaving Johannes' Turbine
with 127.15 laps on 3rd but beaten by Thomas Sasse's Lotus 56B "Goldleaf"
with 131.15 laps. On the next places were 4th Juergen Stuedemann's BMW F2
with 119.15 laps, 5th Tommy Becker's Lotus 28 with 117.66 laps, 6th
Jan Schaffland's Eagle Weslake with 116.32 laps, 7th Alex [Dieter's eldest son]
Jens' Ferrari with 115.25 laps and 8th WC Dieter Jens' Ferrari with 114.53 laps.