Max Kruse Racing VW Golf Mk7 TCRs 2021 Nürburgring 24-hour race
When we were offered the chance to sponsor one of the Max Kruse Racing Mk7 TCRs in this year’s Nürburgring 24-hour race we naturally jumped at the chance. We never envisaged we’d come away with victories, though… Words: Dan Bevis. Photos: Falken & Group C Photography.
KRUSE MISSILES
Driving the Green Hell can be intimidating enough. But would you want to do it in the rain, or at night – or both? Welcome to the mayhem of the Nürburgring 24-hour race…
Officially it’s known as the ‘ADAC Total 24h Race at the Nürburgring Nordschleife’. Colloquially, fans just call it N24. For many years, motorsport die-hards have flocked to the legendary circuit in the Eifel mountains, carrying tents and sleeping bags and endless crates of beer, to watch a stellar cast of sporting heroes battling with the world’s scariest toll road, twice around the clock.
For the 2021 running of the event, things were a little strange… and not just because of Covid. Yes, the virus did dictate that the volume of spectators permitted was drastically reduced, but a small number of fans were able to attend. And they got absolutely bloody soaked. The Nürburgring is famed for its capricious weather and, sure enough, in the early stages of the race the heavens opened with biblical force. Cars were falling off the track left, right and centre, and the race ended up being red-flagged for hour after hour, the teams chewing their fingernails through the night, waiting for the conditions to be deemed safe enough to resume. It was, in a very real sense, the Green Hell at its most hellish. But racing drivers aren’t like normal people.
They thrive on adrenaline, live for the danger, relish seemingly insurmountable challenges, and for Max Kruse Racing, the 2021 N24 was nothing but a colossal success. Football fans will recognise the name – yes, it is that Max Kruse, professional German footballer with fourteen international caps. The genesis of the racing team is an interesting story: back in 2015 when Max was playing for VfL Wolfsburg, he did a driver safety training course with Volkswagen and was instantly hooked, learning new skills and how to handle cars in ways he’d never tried before. It became a bit of an obsession, and he got in touch with one of Volkswagen’s instructors, Benny Leuchter, for some further training. Now, Benny isn’t just a safety driving specialist – he’s a racing driver, currently competing in the WTCC and with a history in various disciplines of motorsport. He also, incidentally, set a FWD lap record at the Nürburgring in 2016, in the then-new Golf GTI Clubsport S.
Benny was immediately impressed with Max’s enthusiasm and curiosity, as well as obvious natural talent – and the more time they spent together, the more they became firm friends. In 2018, the two of them set up a race team together: Max Kruse Racing. Setting their sights on the ADAC TCR Germany series, they jumped in with both feet.
Fast-forward to 2021, and Max Kruse Racing was limbering up two Golf GTI TCRs for entrance in the N24. Four drivers were cherry-picked for each car: the #10 Golf would be driven by Benny, along with Christian Gebhardt, Andreas ‘Mr Nürburgring’ Gülden, and up-and-comer Nick Hancke. This car wears the sublime Falken Tyres livery (and, you might have spotted, the hallowed Performance VW logo on the C-pillars). The second car, #333, would be driven by Swiss hotshot and VW brand ambassador Jasmin Preisig, veteran Matthias Wasel, Gustavo Xavier and Frédéric Yerly. Thanks to the bubbled nature of team life, Covid didn’t overly hamper the team’s preparations for the event, although it’s fair to say the prospect of running in front of severely reduced crowds had its own implications on confidence and motivation.
We caught up with Benny a couple of weeks after the race, while he was testing the new Golf R estate at the ’Ring. Since he was elbows-deep in Golf mechanicals at the time, it made sense to start by talking about the specs of the N24 Golf GTI TCR.
“We did a whole lot of development and testing at Max Kruse Racing,” he says. “You can buy the engine and transmission from Volkswagen Motorsport, but for us it would never be enough to simply use the package that was available to everyone; we did all sorts of testing with engine mapping and gear ratios, getting the car perfectly dialled in for the Nordschleife, and for the racers who would be driving it.
“It’s actually one of the oldest TCR-spec cars competing,” he continues, “so we had to push extra hard with the development. We were out there against brand new TCR Honda Civics and Hyundai i30s, so the fact that we were able to make the platform competitive was a huge achievement for us.”
It’s important to bear in mind throughout that this is still a young and fresh race team, set up by a driver and a footballer rather than an experienced management board, so the achievements – and the race results – are all the more remarkable.
“There was a fantastic relationship between all the drivers from day one,” Benny assures us. “The Nürburgring 24hr is the season highlight, so it was always going to be exciting; the four of us in the Falken #10 car immediately gelled, and everyone across the Max Kruse Racing team worked so perfectly together; we were sharing data with the #333 car and its drivers, analysing what worked well together… and most importantly, everyone had a great time! If we’re all happy in each other’s company and enjoying ourselves, good race results naturally come from that.”
It was, by any standards, a pretty sketchy race. Torrential rain causing cars to crash out all around the circuit, the red flag in force throughout the night – that must have been pretty tough?
“It was, and I do prefer the all-out speed of driving in the dry,” Benny muses. “But man, this car on these Falken tyres is just amazing in the wet! I love the rain, especially in the Golf, and we were really flying; in my stint, we were posting top-ten lap times.” When you consider the competition across the classes, that really is remarkable. And naturally more than a few decisions had to be made on the fly: there are strategic decisions to be formulated before an endurance race in terms of who will drive which stints, which drivers prefer driving at night or day, and so forth… on the Friday before the race, Benny’s crew opted to drive in the order that their names appeared on the car’s windows, and for the most part they were able to stick to that. Although the changing timings and conditions did force the odd rethink.
“A red flag is a tough thing to manage, particularly when it’s in force for that long,” he says. “It’s hard on everyone’s state of mind, you’ve got to work hard to keep the focus and the motivation. It’s very frustrating, just waiting around in the pits. Personally I think it was a shame that the restart didn’t happen an hour or so earlier as the fog started to lift, with double waved yellows on the foggy parts of the track – but it was what it was, you have to work with the conditions and the circumstances.”
Setbacks and on-the-fly reassessments are all part of the make-up of endurance racing, of course, and the ever-changing strangeness did little to dampen the enthusiasm at Max Kruse Racing. “It was the first time for the team at N24,” says Benny, “and it was very special to be competing at the ’Ring with my own team.” In his capacity as a VW ambassador and tester as well as seasoned racer, Benny’s covered well over a thousand hot laps of the Nordschleife, so the place has a real emotional connection for him. Being able to prove the worth of his own team was like a dream come true – even being there was a privilege, but being able to take home a decent result? That’s something else. After the hellish battle against the elements and the clock, the team’s #10 Falken car (yep, the one with our PVW logo on it) came home first in the SP3T class… and even more thrillingly, the #333 car finished behind it, giving Max Kruse Racing a 1-2 finish at their debut N24. “It was a great feeling to end where we did,” Benny beams. “Even in harsh conditions, our drivers didn’t make any mistakes, and we were even fighting factory cars – an incredible result for the team. The fans did the rest, it was great that they could finally be there again. Now we're looking ahead to the second part of the season.”
And it’s all go for Benny, Max and the crew. Preparations are already underway for N24 2022, where they’ll be running a Golf TCR again. “We know the car so well, and have the right tooling for it – we can keep developing it for even more performance,” says Benny. “And driving a Golf really gives something back to the fans too. So many enthusiasts around the ’Ring drive Golfs, you always see them here on open track days, it’s the fans’ choice.”
There’s another exciting development as well: Max Kruse Racing isn’t going to be solely about the racing. The guys are putting the finishing touches on their shiny new Performance Centre, situated in Duisburg – the workstations and tool banks are in place, ready to welcome customers who want all of this race-bred knowledge applied to their own road cars. Golf owners can bring them along to be modified with the knowledge, settings and data learned from racing – engine tuning, gearbox settings, chassis setup, the works. So this landmark 1-2 finish at the N24 hasn’t just been a shot in the arm for a fledgling race team… it’s good news for VW fans everywhere.
«Driving a Golf really gives something back to the fans. So many enthusiasts around the ’Ring drive VW Golfs»
When the chequered flag finally fell it was the familiar Manthey Porsche that took overall victory.
«If we’re all happy in each other’s company and enjoying ourselves, good race results naturally come from that»