21.07.2010

Jurek and Franck: Unimpressed into the lead

The last round of the VLN endurance racing championship at the Nürburgring was marked by many crashs amongst the Renault Clio drivers. Unimpressed by these incidents, the TKS team from Berlin made the pace and increased their lead in the Renault special classification with their fourth win of the season to a comfortable advance. Jürgen Peter (Herzogenrath/ Germany) and „Rennsemmel“ (Nideggen/ Germany) of the Team Roadrunner as well as Ring-Racing Team Manager Uwe Kleen (Boxberg/Eifel) and Jacques Meyer (France) followed into places two and three of the Renaults respectively.

Due to many accidents, the favourites in the special Renault class were out of luck at this last DMV-Grenzlandrennen, round of the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring. The championship leader Elmar Jurek from Berlin, together with his team mate Christian Franck (Luxembourg) who replaced regular driver Jannik Olivo due to illness, meanwhile made his way up into the lead. The crew finished into 42nd overall position and third in class SP3.
“You must first of all also finish the four hours race distance. We had some luck – and of course also won some positions due to the retirements”, explained Jurek honestly. Udo Huppertz from the Team Roadrunner, too, was happy with their place on the podium – with mixed feelings: The second Clio had stopped in the formation lap already due to an accident. “The team is happy and we hope that this is the end of our hard times”, said Huppertz. “There was a lot of traffic on the track, very difficult, but everything went well”, was the summary of third placed, smiling Jacques Meyer.

Also due to a crash, the crew of Henry Walkenhorst and Michael Schrey who were shown into second place of the Renault classification had to finish the race in advance. Schrey crashed into the guardrails at the section “Brünnchen” so badly that he lost the whole front part of the Renault Cup Clio.
The up to lap 22 clearly leading Ring-Racing driver Karl Brinker was out in lap 22 – he lost a wheel.
The team of Mathias Schläppi from Switzerland was also quite disappointed after the spectacular crash of Holger Goedicke: “The car was perfect and we set very good times”, was the summary of team manager and start driver Schläppi. “Yet, we lost some time at the beginning due to a wrong refuelling strategy.” Holger Goedicker, however, made up the loss of time in a perfect way – until they had this accident just before the section of Hatzenbach. Axel Linther and rival Patryk Kulik of the Team Roadrunner were out in lap three after an accident in the section “Brünnchen”.

In the formation lap of the Grenzlandrennen already, Schalug driver Frank-Dieter Lohmann and Malte Tack were involved in an incident so that they both had to stop the race before it had even really started. This was particular annoying for Tack and team Drive-a-racecar: The team had worked on the car throughout the night until the early morning hours to get it fixed for the race.
A disappointing end for Schlaug drivers Dominik Brinkmann and Knut Wolf, too: Temporary into third position, they had to come for a pit stop with a damaged stabilizer and consequently dropped back into tenth place. The team of the three drivers Klaus Niesen, Helmut and Horst Baumann was more than happy with their sixth place in the Renault classification. They celebrated their ever best result. “This was really great fun”, they said happily.

The next round of the VLN-Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring is scheduled for 31st of July with the highlight of the season, the 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen.

Hinweis: Der Text ist eine Mitteilung von "Renault". Der Inhalt spiegelt nicht die Meinung der Veranstaltergemeinschaft Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring wieder.