EKRIS MOTORSPORT CONTINUES ITS SUCCESS WITH A PAIR OF SECOND PLACES FOR THE EKRIS M4 GT4 AT BRANDS H

BRANDS HATCH (7 May, 2017) – After the successful season opener with a pair of third places for drivers Ricardo van der Ende and Max Koebolt at Misano last month, Ekris Motorsport continued its success in the second round of the GT4 European Series Northern Cup at the circuit of Brands Hatch. In both races at the circuit in Kent, the team’s two drivers managed to score an excellent second-place finish amidst the strong 31-car field. “We are really happy with this performance. Our Ekris M4 GT4 is very strong and proves to be competitive,” Ekris Motorsport team manager, Stian Boers, comments. “The races were a little bit chaotic with many safety cars, which made it difficult to find the right strategy, but the results give us reason to celebrate.”

Both races were held on Sunday. For race one, Max Koebolt had qualified the Ekris M4 GT4 with starting number 8 in second place. In the race, starting driver Koebolt held on to this position during his stint and left it to Ricardo van der Ende to bring the car home in second place as well.

Qualifying for race two, in which Ricardo van der Ende set the lap time in the Ekris M4 GT4, was a close affair, with the lap times of the cars in fourth to sixth place only 0.016 seconds apart. Eventually, van der Ende claimed fifth place on the grid, merely 0.001 second ahead of the car in sixth. In the race, the Ekris M4 GT4 made good progress, firstly in the hands of van der Ende and then with Koebolt behind the wheel to drive the car across the finish line, repeating the team’s result from earlier in the day.

Ricardo van der Ende: “Returning to Brands Hatch brings back so many fantastic memories. After all, this is the venue where I won the Formula Ford Festival back in 1999! It is amazing to see how many fans still recognise me. Many of them came with photographs to sign. In free practice, we were still struggling a bit with the used tyres from Misano, we couldn’t really do much in terms of set-up. In the races, we were running really well. The only car we couldn’t keep up with was the Ginetta, that turned out to be too fast for us, but with all the other cars, we didn’t have any problems at all, as the results show, and that bodes well for the races to come!”

Max Koebolt: “Every time I am in the car, I am learning, and that is an important thing for me. Here at Brands Hatch, the car handled very well. In the second race, we made good progress from fifth on the grid to finish second. Of course, the many safety car interventions made it difficult to find a rhythm, but all in all, a pair of second places is a good result for us.”