Cheer up boys!

The ninth round of the VLN endurance racing championship was exceptionally full of excitement and dramas. The latter in particular applied to not less than three of the four remaining candidates for the title. Whether it was technical failure or accident: Maik Rosenberg (Attendorn/ Germany), Jannik Olivo and Elmar Jurek (both from Berlin) as well as Markus Schmickler (Bad Neuenahr/Ahrweiler/ Germany) and Lars Heisel (Bielefeld/ Germany) will no longer play a role in the decision about the championship.

“It is so bitter and our disappointment can hardly be expressed in mere words right now”, admitted Jurek and Olivo. “Even though it will be difficult, we will get up again and continue to fight. I hope we will be more successful next year.” Andreas Lautner, team manager of LMS Engineering driver Rosenberg, too, put it in clear words: “What a pity! That’s it now with the championship. Not even the new personal fastest time of 8:39.225 minutes in practice represents a comfort for our team.” Onto the question how things would continue now, he answered: “Of course, we will continue. It would be a shame for these top cars to get dusty. Any anyone who knows me also knows that I still have some irons in the fire.”

At the final of the season, the title can in theory no longer be taken away from for Carsten Knechtges (Mayen/ Germany), Manuel Metzger (Rickenbach-Hütten/ Germany) and Tim Scheerbarth (Dormagen/ Germany) in their BMW Z4 of the team Black Falcon, provided that they will not commit any really stupid actions. Open in contrast is still the fight about second place. Dominik Brinkmann (Dortmund/ Germany) and Stephan Epp (Wuppertal/ Germany) have now moved up from amongst the Renault crews and are in second position. Last year’s champions Mario Merten (Nürburg/ Germany) and Wolf Silvester (Nürnberg/ Germany) are also back again to fight for points and positions with their BMW 325.

Even though the championship is practically decided – the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring remains exciting and the fans can look forward to the a fascinating finale at the 36th DMV Münsterlandpokal race on 29th of October.