Lukas Dunner wins his first car race with Wimmer Werk

“IF YOU WANNA FINISH FIRST, FIRST YOU HAVE TO FINISH”

Lukas Dunner started on March 22nd, 2019 in the new racing season even more successful than he had finished the 2018 season. He wins a packed thriller on the historic
circuit in Estoril, Portugal in impressive style with the Vienna team Wimmer Werk.

Last Friday and Saturday, the season opener of the Ultimate Cup took place in sunny Portugal with postcard weather for the Viennese race team Wimmer Werk, with Lukas Dunner, Matthias Kaiser and the experienced long distance professional Vincent Capillaire. With the motivation of having won the championship title in the VdeV series the year before, the whole team was well prepared and motivated to travel to Estoril, Portugal and secured the services of the young Vienna driver for the season opener following his strong performance last November.
On Day 1 – On Friday, there were two free practice sessions on the program and based on the motto “The culprit returns to the scene of the crime”, Lukas Dunner left no doubt from the beginning what his intention was this race weekend. He consistently set the pace and whenever he was in the car, the fastest times.

After his fantastic debut in endurance racing at the end of 2018, where Dunner, together with his teammates from Wimmer Werk, took the chequered flag in second place only a few tenths of a second off the winner, after a famous comeback, you could feel the youngster from Vienna had only one goal: full attack and win the race.

Following the standing position in Friday’s practice, one could have great confidence that they should be at the top of the starting field in qualifying because the two teammates, Matthias Kaiser and Vincent Capillare were also extremely fast on track in Portugal. If not, that is, for the unexpected disaster on Friday afternoon – engine failure for the Oreca-fueled Ligier LMP3!
The Team Wimmer Werk showed up on Day 2 for race day, where they displayed enormous heart and total commitment Saturday, having worked nearly all night and done what was
almost not humanly possible. With the indescribable dedication, and support of Oreca and Ligier, the Wimmer Werk car just made it out for qualifying two minutes after the start of the timed session. In the end, all three drivers posted top times while Dunner managed to get only one fast lap and drove the absolute fastest time of the entire field, more than three-tenths of a second ahead of Jonny Mowlem, the quickest professional in the class, so together with his teammates, put the LMP3 Ligier from Wimmer Werk on pole position.

To keep things exciting, some misunderstandings with the race director led to the next challenge for the dedicated team from Vienna. They would have to start the race from the pit lane and join at the back of the field, and therefore completely redefine the race strategy.