ROWE Racing gains another victory at the 6h Race

For the second time in a row, the victory at the Opel 6 Hour ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen went to ROWE Racing. After 6:00:01.979 hours racing time and race distance of 925.604 kilometres, Jan Seyffarth (Querfurt-Leimbach/ Germany), Nico Bastian (Frankfurt/ Germany) and Lance David Arnold (Duisburg/ Germany) took the chequered flag in their Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 into first place. Positions two and three were scored by the team of Phoenix-Racing. Frank Stippler (Bad Münstereifel/ Germany), Marc Basseng (Neusalza Spremberg/ Germany) and Roman Rusinov (Russia) in an Audi R8 LMS ultra finished in second place with a gap of 4:08.675 minutes. The top three were completed by Christopher Haase (Kulmbach/ Germany), Harold Primat (Switzerland) and double starter Stippler in the sister car. “This was a fantastic success”, said Enno Fuchs, Executive Director Perspective Opel 2022, who presented the awards on behalf of the Opel car manufacturer from Rüsselsheim/ Germany. “Congratulations to all the winners as this was really a tough race under these ever changing weather conditions. The ROWE team has really deserved the victory.” A 30 minutes summary of the highlight of the season in the Nürburgring VLN endurance racing championship will be broadcasted in channel Sport 1 on 31 August 2013 at 19:00 hours.

Stippler in the Phoenix Audi gained pole position with a time of 8:04.654 minutes in the timed practice session which took place in the same morning. After the start, the expert at the Nordschleife first of all defended his lead. The team lost their first place then after the scheduled first pit stop and the change to driver Rusinov; Seyffarth completed a double stint in the SLS AMG GT3. The ROWE team worked out their decisive advantage when it started to rain. After 15 laps, Seyffarth changed to Arnold and the team decided to fit slicks with some cuts in the pattern and this turned out to be the perfect decision. “We could not expect to score this victory, even though our time in the practice was fast enough to start from the first row on the grid”, said Seyffart. “The conditions today were really very hard but in particular the tyres were perfect in these difficult and changing conditions. I had an almost completely dry stint, by two team mates Lance David and Nico had to work really hard in contrast.” Basseng into second place just missed the victory. “It does not matter at all”, he said. „It is a top result to finish second in this strong race.“ The Audi driver covered the total of 3.5 hours racing behind the steering wheel of the R8 super sports race car and was happy but also quite exhausted after the race. “Finally, I am happy that I managed to keep the car on the track – that was difficult enough.” Stippler commented the fact that they missed the victory as follows: “We cold have achieved a better result had it been dry but we are still suffering a few problems to be sorted out under the prevailing conditions. To close the gap to the leaders, we would have had to take too big risks.”

Into fourth place behind the top three finished Jochen Krumbach (Eschweiler/ Germany), Jörg Bergmeister (Langenfeld/ Germany) and Nick Tandy (Great Britain) in the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR of the team Manthey-Racing. The fastest GT3-Porsche was driven by Peter Dumbreck (Great Britain), Martin Ragginger (Austria) and Sebastian Asch (Ammerbruch (Germany) who finished fifth overall. The team in second place at the fourth VLN round, Abdulaziz Al Faisal (Saudi Arabia), Max Sandritter (Raubling/ Germany) and Dominik Baumann (Austria) in the BMW Z4 GT3 of the PIXUM Team Schubert, crossed the Line in sixth place.

The winners in the Opel Astra OPC Cup were Jannik Olivo, Elmar Jurek (both from Berlin) and Alexander Schula (Hattersheim/ Germany). Their advance after 34 laps ahead of Thorsten Wolters (Berlin) and Michael Brüggenkamp (Gersheim/ Germany) was 59.618 seconds and thus less than a minute. The victory in the Porsche-Cup class went to GetSpeed Performance for the fourth successive time. Even a damaged tyre suffered in the last lap could not stop Adam Osieka (Bonn/ Germany), Christer Joens (Ingelheim/ Germany) and Steve Jans (Belgium). The Renault Clip Cup class was won by Dirk and Tim Groneck (both from Melle/ Germany) and the fastest Toyota GT86 was driven by Ken, Ludo and Marc Stessens (all from Belgium).

Christoph Breuer (Nettersheim/ Germany) and Elmar Deegener (Stelzenberg/ Germany) were able to defend their championship lead after their fifth class win together with Dieter Schmidtmann (Mechernich/ Germany) in the Audi TT-RS 2.0 entered by Raeder Motorsport. After their third class win, the Manthey driver trio with Jacobs / Weiss and Kainz Position went into second place. The classification in the VLN Junior Trophy shows Alexander Mies (Heiligenhaus/ Germany) in the lead after five of nine races; into first place in the VLN Series Production Car Trophy are Dominik Thiemann (Lemgo/ Germany) and Hajo-Franz Müller (Odenthal/ Germany). In the lead of the VLN Speed Trophy is PIXUM Team Schubert.

The sixth round of the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring will take place on 14 September. The 36th RCM DMV Grenzlandrennen will run over the traditional distance of four hours.