Three races, three winners: After Audi and Porsche, the BMW Sports Trophy Team Marc VDS celebrated the first victory for BMW in the current season of the VLN endurance racing championship. Many spectators had come to the circuit in the Eifel region and they enjoyed an exciting race running over the Nürburgring Nordschleife and over four hours in spring-like temperatures. After 4:05:00.778 hours and 27 laps, Nick Catsburg (Netherlands) and Dirk Adorf (Michelbach/ Germany) took the chequered flag as winners of the 56th ADAC ACAS H&R Cup. Their advance ahead of Rudi Adams (Ahütte/ Germany), Kevin Estre (Austria) and Arno Klasen (Karlshausen/ Germany) in the McLaren MP4 12C GT3 entered by Dörr Motorsport was only 3.575 seconds in the end. The top three were completed by Marc Basseng (Rosenbach/ Germany), Marcel Fässler (Switzerland) and Frank Stippler (Bad Münstereifel/ Germany) in an Audi R8 LMS ultra. The driver trio of the Phoenix team finished with a gap of 11.912 seconds behind the winners. Into fourth position followed Uwe Alzen (Betzdorf/ Germany) and Philipp Wlazik (Gladbeck/ Germany) in a BMW Z4 GT3 of the team H&R Spezialfedern. Behind Yelmer Buurman (Netherlands), Hubert Haupt (Munich) and Christian Menzel (Kelberg/ Germany), driving a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 of Black Falcon, the winners of the last race, Patrick Huisman (Netherlands), Klaus Abbelen and Sabine Schmitz (both from Barweiler/ Germany), in a Porsche 911 GT3 R finished in sixth place and contributed to the variety in makes amongst the top places in the final results. A 30 minutes summary of the race will be shown in channel Sport1 on 3rd May at 12 o\’clock. Repeats will be broadcasted in Sport1+.
\”I am really excited\”, said triple VLN Champion Adorf after the race. \”Even though our main target here was to make a good preparation for the Nürburgring ADAC Zurich 24h Race, I am of course delighted about the win. It was a tough competition and things became quite close again towards the end of the race.\” The Marc VDS Team had started from twelfth grid position and their strategy included an early pit stop. The BMW then turned out to be the fastest car over the distance. \”We were fully concentrated onto our own performance and drove our own race without turning special attention to our competitors\”, said Catsburg who celebrated his second VLN win on the Dutch National Day. \”You could well see that our Z4 had a very good handling also beside the racing line. And this is particularly important in an endurance race as you have to lap many cars.\”
More than happy with their result, being second on the podium for Dörr McLaren, was Klasen: \”This is a fantastic result. In particular as we did in no way benefit from the bad luck of the other teams but we were pretty fast on our own\”, said the 26 times VLN winner. \”Each kilometre at the Nordschleife brings us closer to a perfect tuning and to our aim. It is clear that we compete to celebrate our first win as soon as possible.\” Adams adds: \”We are specifically proud that we also completed the fastest race lap with a time of 8:12.086 minutes.“ Fässler who completed the last stint in the Audi was absolutely excited about the race. \”I must say that I had really much fun\”, said the race driver from Switzerland. \”I had to push all the time, I was involved in fantastic close fights and I had a lot of work to do.\”
The Nissan GT Academy Team RJN provided a surprise in the timed practice. With the fastest time of 8:07.059 minutes, Alex Buncombe (Great Britain) achieved the first pole position for Nissan at the \’Green Hell\’. Due to a damaged tyre in the race, the team which, apart from Buncombe, was made up to Lucas Ordonez (Spain) and Florian Strauss (Berlin) lost many places. The driver trio finally finished the race in eighth place.
The winners\’ lists in the Cup classes showed familiar names in the top positions. Mario Merten (Kelberg/ Germany) and Jürgen Nett (Mayen/ Germany) scored their first win of the season in the Opel Astra OPC Cup and are now in the lead of the Cup classification. The victory in the Porsche Cup class went to the GetSpeed-Performance driver trio of Adam Osieka (Meuspath/ Germany), Steve Jans (Luxembourg) and Christopher Mies (Heiligenhaus/ Germany). The fastest Renault Clio was driven by the current champions Dirk and Tim Groneck (both from Melle/ Germany) and the classification in the BMW M235i Racing Cup class showed Max Partl (Pyrbaum/ Germany) and Jörg Weidinger (Happurg/ Germany) in first place. Only the TMG GT86 Cup class saw a new winning team: Brother and sister Sarah and Nigel Moore (Great Britain) finished first with an advance of one lap ahead of the Toyota Suisse Racing Team and celebrated their first VLN class win.
The winners in group H were Achim and Peter Heinrich (Simmerath/ Germany) who completed 25 laps with their spectacular BMW M1 at the 24.358 kilometres long combination of the Nürburgring short version and the Nordschleife. The fastest VLN production car – a Porsche Carrera entered by the Black Falcon Team TDM Friction – was driven by Ivan Jacoma, Manuel Metzger (both from Switzerland) and Christian Schmitz (Herresbach/ Germany). With their third win in the class of VLN production cars up to 2500 cc cylinder capacity (V4), Rolf Derscheid (Much/ Germany) und Michael Flehmer (Overath/ Germany) defended their lead in the championship.
After the past three races in 2 weeks intervals, the teams in the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring will now have one week more to get prepared for the next round. The 45th Adenauer ADAC simfy Trophy will take place on 17th May. This fourth championship race will run over the usual four hours duration.
