The first night race in the FIA GT Championship since 2002 was almost a perfect weekend for Jos Menten and Peter Kox in the #28 Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Murciélago R-GT. Team Boss Hans Reiter was extremely satisfied after qualifying: “We are in fifth position only two-tenths of a second off the front row. We can be more than satisfied with this result bearing in mind how close the competition is in the FIA GT on this circuit.”

The team wanted to take advantage of the Lamborghini’s low tyre wear to make up the time difference in the race. In contrast to its direct competitors the Lamborghini Murciélago R-GT stresses its tyres significantly less, the team, therefore, decided to change tyres only once during the race – the competition in contrast twice. Starting driver Peter Kox made the first of the two mandatory pit stops only 20 minutes into the race and handed the

Lamborghini over to Jos Menten. The pit lane at the 2.7 kilometre Adria Raceway is extremely narrow and gives teams a limited amount of space for pit stops.

The Corvette in the neighbouring pit stopped at almost the same time as Menten peeled into the pit lane to make the Lamborghini’s second mandatory pit stop – an agreement made between the two teams before the race was therefore worthless. The Corvette parked in front of the Reiter Engineering pit, therefore preventing Jos Menten from stopping the Lamborghini in the correct position for the mechanics – this cost the team almost 50 seconds. Fifty seconds that would have meant third place at the end of the two-hour race. “Unfortunately, ‘what if’ doesn’t count. Sixth place reflected our race pace in Adria,” summarised Hans Reiter after the seventh FIA GT race of the season.