The fastest of the German Touring Series classes had five cars in the field. Five BMWs and one Porsche. Michael McAleenan had pole, followed by John Allen in the Porsche, Ralf Lindackers in his M3, Vytis Aranauskas in his E92 M3 and Ron Ballard in an E46.
At the green flag, McAleenan use pole position to his advantage and led the field into Turn 1 followed by Lindackers and Allen side by side with Aranauskas trailing. When he exited Turn 1, McAleenan hit the afterburner and shot out to a big lead.
Five laps into the race, McAleenan had put a 13-second gap over Allen, who spun briefly, giving McAleenan a bigger cushion. About a half hour into the race, Lindackers suffered a serious crash, which brought out the red flags, halting the field on track. When the red flags were pulled, the black flags came out, stopping the race, which put McAleenan in first.
“I was worried we were going to have to bunch up again and then have to restart,” said McAleenan, whose team patched up his car after damage incurred in the ST2 race earlier that day. “Gerald Lowe and all the guys at Lowe Group Racing did a great job putting the car back together. In ST2, a guy spun in front of me and I ran into him. They rebuilt the front of the car, got it back out there and it was almost perfect, so I’m pretty happy with the result after that. It looks a little nasty but it still works.”
Allen finished second after having some mechanical issues of his own.
“We blew an oil cooler on Friday, so I missed qualifying in the afternoon,” Allen said. “We had to overnight an oil cooler in from Dallas. We finally got it on the car yesterday at 1 o’clock and I was able to make the qualifying race yesterday but my crew guy Zach Bergert did a phenomenal job putting the car back together.”
Finishing third was Aranauskas, who was acclimating to a new racetrack and a new racecar.
“I was racing GTS2 last year and I jumped into GTS4 and it’s a totally different game for me, a faster car, but again the whole weekend was awesome,” Aranauskas said. “It went perfectly from Thursday all the way to Sunday.”
