A first class grid is expected to be at the start of the seasonal highlight of the VLN endurance racing championship at the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife. The calendar includes the Opel 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen to take place on 23rd August as the only race in the calendar of this most popular grassroots series in Europe running over a distance of six hours. And even though this represents an only 50 percent longer distance compared to the usual 4 Hour Races – the situation will be completely different. The standard strategy which has been applied so often during the year is almost for nothing once a year. This is why many times here some teams will be the stars which nobody has taken into account, and this not only in relation to the fight about the overall victory but also about the top places in the many different classes in which more than 190 cars will start in total. The experience endurance racing is free all around the Nordschleife. Access to the open grandstands at the Grand Prix Circuit including a visit in the paddocks and on the starting grid will be granted for the family friendly price of 15 euro per person. Young people under the age of 14 years have free entry. Tickets will be available at the box offices on-site. More information around the most popular grassroots series in Europe is available in the internet on the website www.nuerburgring-langstrecken-serie.de.
A highlight in the provisional entry list are Gabriele Tarquini (Italy), WTCC Champion of the year 2009, and his team mate in the Honda works team Tiago Monteiro (Portugal). The two touring car stars will compete in the 6h Race as it is a perfect preparation to the touring car world championship round which will take place in 2015 during the ADAC Zurich 24h Race. They will participate in a Honda Civic Type R of the Team Fugel in class SP3 (VLN-Specials up to 2,000 cc cylinder capacity). The two Honda drivers are currently shown in positions four (Monteiro) and five (Tarquini) in the Touring Car World Championship drivers’ championship.
A British super sports car will also be at the start of the 6h Race to compete against the top cars. Stefan Mücke (Berlin) and Pedro Lamy (Portugal) will compete in the works supported Aston Martin Vantage GT3. With fifth place at the Nürburgring 24h Race, both the drivers and their car have impressively demonstrated their performance. At the 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen Mücke and Lamy will meet a number of established race drivers with top experience in racing at the Nordschleife – amongst them the Team Frikadelli Racing which has been successful three times already during the current year. The regular crew in the Porsche 911 GT3 R, Sabine Schmitz, Klaus Abbelen (both from Barweiler/ Germany) and Patrick Huisman (Netherlands) will once again be completed by Frank Stippler (Bad Münstereifel/ Germany). The Audi driver himself can look back onto eleven VLN victories. Another strong team is ROWE Racing wishing to score a hattrick after the 6h Race wins in the years 2013 and 2013. In the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 two other brilliant experts at the Nordschleife, Thomas Jäger (Munich) and Jan Seyffarth (Querfurt-Leimbach/ Germany) will share the steering wheel in their race car.
Should a Porsche team win the race, this would represent the 200th victory for Porsche in the history of the VLN endurance racing championship at the Nürburgring since its very first year in 1977. Apart from the said Frikadelli-Team, competitors such as Falken-Motorsports, Haribo-Racing or the Wochenspiegel Team Manthey will have good chances to score this historic success. They have finally stopped their long row of bad luck at the sixth VLN round in finishing fifth overall and the drivers Georg Weiss (Monschau/ Gemany), Oliver Kainz (Kottenheim/ Germany), Michael Jacobs (Roetgen-Rott/ Germany) and Jochen Krumbach (Eschweiler/ Germany) are highly motivated.
With 19 cars class SP7 (VLN Specials up to 4,000 cc cylinder capacity) will be the strongest class in terms of numbers. With the exception of the BMW-M3 driver duo Christian Linnek (Heiligenhaus/ Germany) and Franz Xaver Berndorfer (Austria) this class includes only Porsche 911 GT3 race cars who always have very tough fights amongst each other. Three class wins have so far been scored by Frank Kräling (Winterberg/ Germany), Marc Gindorf (Monaco) and Christopher Brück (Cologne) in the Manthey-Porsche, two top results were celebrated by Andreas Weishaupt (Ulm/ Germany) and Tim Scheerbarth (Dormagen/ Germany) in the Porsche of the team Black Falcon. The impressive number of 16 cars is entered for the 6h Race in the BMW M235i Racing Cup class. With 15 close-to-production touring cars, a similar number of cars will compete in class V6 (VLN production cars up to 4,000 cc cylinder capacity). The GT3 class (SP9) and the Opel Astra OPC Cup category will figure around 14 cars respectively. The total of 517 drivers from 27 different countries have submitted their entries for the race organised by the MSC Ruhr-Blitz-Bochum – and amongst those 14 female drivers. They all will compete in 192 cars of 21 different car manufacturers. The positions on the starting grid will be determined in the timed practice from 08:30 to 10:00hrs. Clerk of the Course Horst Golombeck (Bochum/ Germany) will give the start signal for the race over the six hour duration over the 24.358 kilometers long combination of the Nürburgring short version and the Nordschleife at 12 o’clock exactly.
