Bennie Streuer’s small but heartfelt wish almost came true, and André Kretzer/Björn Bosch (LCR F1 Suzuki) would have won Saturday’s sidecar race. Had that happened, Streuer wouldn’t have lost so many points in the overall standings while he was away. In the end, it didn’t happen. For Kretzer, who had led for a long time, it was a misunderstanding; for winner Sattler, it was a logical outcome.
Kretzer knew, while in the lead, that Sattler would launch an attack on him at the end. “That had already become clear a lap earlier. I drifted too far out on the track, Sattler cut in on the inside and passed me. But I thought we still had two laps to go. After the next lap, though, we were waved off.” Co-driver Björn Bosch recounts: “Everything went really smoothly. Despite the close battle, we never made contact with Sattler. I almost flew out of the boat once, though. But nobody’s to blame for that. My mistake…”
Robert Zimmermann/Michael Prudlik (LCR F1 Suzuki) had right after the start Peter Schröder/Denise Kartheininger (LCR F1 Suzuki) bumped into, causing a piece of the bodywork to come off. Lady Kartheininger took it in stride: “Zimmermann was just trying to get a hand on my behind.”
For the fourth time this year, Josef Sattler and Uwe Neubert in their Adolf RS1 F1 BMW have left the rest of the field in their wake. “That was one of my best races,” Sattler enthused. “We were in fifth place going into the first corner, but we fought our way through well. We drove extremely conservatively on the tires over the entire distance. We had reserves left toward the end.” Neubert adds: “The victory was ours in the end.” The Bavarian-Saxon duo has now closed the gap to IDM leader Bennie Streuer to just five points. The Dutchman is not in Assen, but at the Sidecar World Championship in Rijeka.
Third place went to the well-deserving John Smits and Gunter Verbrugge (RCN F1 Yamaha). It was the Dutch duo’s first podium finish of the season, and Smits was overjoyed.
