Five of ten qualifying rounds of the 2014 VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring are completed. This unique racing series at the Nürburgring presents itself in the best light once again this year. Variety plays a big role considering the great number of different race cars participating in the series as well as considering the drivers. So the frequently claimed statement “There is something to suit everybody…” in this case is anything else than a flowery phrase only.
The total of 381 cars from 33 different manufacturers participated in the first half of the season and not less than 943 drivers coming from 34 different countries took part. The average grid at each event comprised 175 cars starting the races and they covered 14,290 laps at the 24.358 kilometres long combination of the Nürburgring short version and the Nordschleife. This corresponds to a distance of 348,233 kilometres – so almost the distance between earth and moon.
The leading positions are very well balanced. The five pole positions went to five different teams in four different car makes. After the Audi R8 LMS ultra of the team Phoenix-Racing at the opening round, ROWE Racing and Black Falcon with the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 were equally successful as was the Nissan works team with the GT-R NISMO and Jürgen Alzen Motorsport with the Ford GT3. The greatest density in performance was to be noted at the first championship race when the top ten teams in the qualifying were separated by only 4.871 seconds.
Regarding race victories, the team of Frikadelli Racing was the most successful one. The other winners were Phoenix-Racing, Black Falcon and the BMW Sports Trophy Team Marc VDS with the BMW Z4 GT3. It was also the BMWE driver duo of Nick Catsburg (Netherlands) and Dirk Adorf (Hennef/ Germany) who took the chequered flag with the smallest time difference. The driver duo crossed the finish line at the third race with an advance of only 3.575 seconds ahead of the second-placed McLaren MP4 12C GT3 of Dörr-Motorsport.
The championship 2014 is open for cars in 33 different classes. On the average, the class of GT3 cars (SP9) had the greatest number of cars at the start. They were followed by class V6 (VLN production cars up to 3,500 cc cylinder capacity) with the average of 16 cars and the Opel Astra OPC Cup class (Cup1). This class had 15 Cup-Astra starting on the average. There were no surprises regarding the statistical figures on the makes. At each race, the average of 50 BMW cars were at the start. Porsche follows in second position with 38 cars ahead of Opel with 17 vehicles.
The sixth round of the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring is on the calendar on the 2nd of August. And the 37th RCM DMV Grenzlandrennen will carry on with this extraordinary history of this most popular grassroots series in Europe. The positions on the grid will be determined on basis of the results at the timed practice between 08:30 and 10:00hrs. The race will start at 12 o’clock exactly and run over the usual four hours duration.
