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Matthias Himmelmann (Münch Racing) wins the Oschersleben Sprint (now with photo gallery)
11th August 2012
TTXGP and FIM press office
Matthias Himmelmann is the winner of today's three-lap race at Oschersleben in Germany. Aboard the latest model of the Münch TTE, he finished over twenty seconds ahead of former GP250 rider Katja Poensgen, also riding a Münch TTE. During the race, Matthias Himmelmann clocked up a best lap time of 1'38.481.
The Chinese Zongshen team confirmed its good performances in the practice session. Ho-Chi Fung, the fastest of the Zongshen Racing Team’s three riders, came in third just behind Katja Poensgen. However his faster laptime today of 1:46.683 is actually faster than Katja's production muench racer today; 1:46.683 which hints at what is to come in the future from this development chassis from Zongshen.
There were nine riders at the start of this Sprint that is part of the FIM e-Power International Championship and TTXGP Euro Championship 2012 series.
This three-lap Sprint specially organised at Oschersleben provided a showcase for the performances and top speeds of the motorcycles without the challenges of managing and conserving battery power that riders face in a classic race like the one taking place tomorrow, Sunday, at 12.50 hours over ten laps.
"I wasn’t going flat out," Matthias Himmelmann admitted after the race. "I didn’t have enough confidence in the front end during this race. We’ll have to fix that problem. I could have lapped a whole second faster."
Race one
1st place: Matthias Himmelman, no. 49 Muench Racing
I have to say I had a really great race with an exceptionally strong start, I was confident going into the race especially with such a great German crowd cheering on the team. They really help inspire us to do the best we can to put on a good show. The Sprint for me was a lot of fun because it allows everyone to to just race and not worry about battery management as they mst do for the longer race. I am happy so many of our sponsors where able to be here and share the experience. We have more than 100 guests celebrating in our teams hospitality unit and the atmosphere here at Oschersleben is great, we are really happy to have a first and second place today, but it will be even better when we have the whole podium tomorrow.
2nd place: Katya Poensgen No. 65 Muench Racing
It was fantastic racing in the sprint, it is so raw, I could just open the throttle and go. It was short; I was not sweating but it was a lot of fun. I will do my best to go faster tomorrow for the big race. My bike has a different engine that Matthias’s bike as I am on the production racer and he has a development motor. We also run a different type of battery pack on this bike to the development bike as this is totally enclosed so safer, but it means you have to be more careful with over-heating. I am confident for tomorrow and looking forward to representing Muench once again.
3rd place : Ho chi Fung; no.59 Zongshen
As a racer I don’t feel any different going into a sprint race or a longer distance one, I just want to go out there and win. The feeling is just the same. This race was great, I started from further back on the grid than I would have liked as we had some battery pack problems with the bike yesterday after the morning qualification where I was still learning the track. I only completed a few laps yesterday morning before we had some issues with the battery pack so I was forced to go slower than I had wanted to. We spent a lot of yesterday afternoon working hard on the pack, and missed the second qualifying session. Over night we have charged and discharged the new configuration; my team have worked really hard to give me the best possible bike for the race and everything seems to be holding ok. I am really optimistic about electric racing; I have only been eracing for a few years but have along history with my first love Petrol bikes, but my team is amazing and the pace at which the technology is developing I am confident it will not take them too long before they will be build me a bike that will go even faster the traditional petrol fuelled bikes.
I expected this new bike with a more powerful motor and better batteries to be faster; I had really high expectations and was really disappointed in Assen with all the problems we had been having but this was due to the lack of time to properly prepare and test the bike away from racing. The team are still getting to know this new bike but learning very fast. This morning I had a bit of traffic in front of me including my team mate Tang Yu; it actually took me over half a lap to get ahead of him as he was racing well. I got really close to Thomas in the second lap coming out of the chicane, but his bike is very powerful on the straights, I thought I would wait until the last corner to try again, and it worked for me. I got closer and closer and finally took over him on the right side on the last corner… I actually was disappointed though as I wanted to come second today, we felt we had the bike and racer to do this but with the traffic early on it was impossible to catch them all in just three laps., I need a little more time. We look forward to tomorrows race.
4th place: Thomas Schricht, no. 6 Muench racing
I am not sure exactly what happened because I have not had the time yet to examine the date from the bikes but I was so happy in the first lap, the bike was doing much better than yesterday and I had a great feeling about the race. I was actually trying to push the bike further and try to catch Katya but I made a small mistake in the chicane in lap twp and noticed that Ho Chi had come up really close. I then focused on making up the ground and in the last lap in the last corner, just when I need to keep maximum power, Ho Chi sailed passed me and my bike just didn’t give me the power I needed as it should have done.
Overall I had a great race, it was a lot of fun racing in a sprint, we have obviously meet with Zongshen on the track a number of times and they are always great to race against.
RACE ONE
pos | no. | rider | team (bike) | time | gap | best (lap) |
| 1 | 49 | Himmelman | Muench (Muench TTE) | 5:02.397 | 1:38.481 (2) | |
| 2 | 65 | Poensgen | Muench (Muench TTE) | 5:26.100 | 23.703 | 1:46.683 (3) |
| 3 | 59 | Fung | Zongshen (Zongshen) | 5:30.231 | 27.703 | 1:46.588 (3) |
| 4 | 6 | Schricht | Muench (Muench TTE) | 5:31.727 | 29.330 | 1:47.858 (2) |
| 5 | 25 | Yu | Zongshen (Zongshen) | 5:37.289 | 34.892 | 1.48.881 (2) |
| 6 | 36 | Amendt | Epo (Epobike) | 5:45.968 | 43.571 | 1.53.142 (2) |
| 7 | 72 | Reichmann | Reichmann Racing (mavizen TTX02) | 5:47.529 | 45.132 | 1:52.167 (3) |
| 8 | 64 | Linden | Zongshen (Zongshen) | 5:48.422 | 46.045 | 1:52.385 (3) |
| 9 | 91 | Bergau | Bergau Racing (mavizen TTX02) | 5:51.170 | 48.773 | 1:53.782 (3) |
Fastest lap | ||||||
| 49 | Himmelman | Muench | 138.481 (2) | |||
Harold Gasse did not qualify to take place in today's race.
Follow the races live on www.ris-timing.be/v2/fim-ewc-8-hours-oschersleben
More Photos shortly thanks to: good-shoot.com/FIM
Related Web Link: full race results
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