Team manager Oliver Skach has invested a great deal of energy and passion into the project since the inception of his IDM Superbike team, which is the only one officially supported by the German importer. However, his riders, Martin Vugrinec and Philipp Steinmayr, are in the bottom quarter of the timesheets following the free practice sessions at the Schleizer Dreieck. Skach isn't fazed by this.
It’s been a rollercoaster ride. For 26-year-old “Spider” Martin Vugrinec, it looked for a while during yesterday’s Superbike pre-practice as though he was about to qualify for Superpole 2, but then he fell short by two spots. So today, the hot-blooded Croatian will have to finish among the top three in Superpole 1 to still qualify for Superpole 2. That’s where the final battle for starting positions among the fastest 15 riders will take place.
“I see Martin making it into Superpole 2,” Skach says optimistically, explaining why his regular rider fell so far back in the third free practice session this morning. “He went out on the track with old tires that already had 20 laps on them.”
The team manager can prove that, objectively speaking, things aren’t going too badly for Team Skach Motors Kawasaki Racing. “We’ve only been competing for a full season and aren’t yet a top-3 team with lap times of 1:24 minutes, but we’re now just 1.7 seconds behind the leaders. At the season opener in Oschersleben, it was still two seconds. So we’re definitely closing the gap and want to finish in the top ten of the championship. Martin definitely has the potential to do that.”