This victory was not at all a nice gift but purely hard word: After 2012 and 2013, ROWE Racing celebrated their third victory in a row at the OPEL 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen. Jan Seyffarth (Querfurt-Leimbach/ Germany) and Thomas Jäger (Munich) took the chequered flag in their Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 as winners after a race duration of 6:08:03.684 hours and the total of 36 laps completed. Their advance ahead of the second placed Haribo Racing Team was 3:09,079 minutes. Norbert Siedler (Austria), Uwe Alzen (Betzdorf/ Germany) and Mike Stursberg (Wermelskirchen/ Germany) in the Porsche 911 GT3 R with the famous golden bears scored the best result of the season for the Haribo Racing Team. Oliver Kainz (Krottenheim/ Germany) made this very nice birthday present to himself. Together with team mates Georg Weiss (Monschau/ Germany), Michael Jacobs (Roetgen-Rott/ Germany) and Jochen Krumbach (Eschweiler/ Germany) the experienced endurance racing driver completed the event in his Porsche 911 GT3 RSR of the Wochenspiegel Team Manthey in third place. The highlight of the season was characterized by changing weather conditions at the ‘Green Hell’ and a number of top drivers had to stop on the track after accidents. A 30 minutes summary of the seventh round of the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring will be shown in channel Sport1 on 30th August at 17:00hrs.
ROWE Racing managed not to get involved in all the incidents at the beginning of the race. In the difficult weather conditions, the driver duo went into the lead in lap 20 only and defended their first position until the finish. “This was a very significant win because the weather played an important role in today’s race”, said Seyffart who contributed to all of the three successive wins for ROWE Racing. “Our team has not made the slightest mistake today and our tyre choice had always been perfect. The victory is of great significance in particular for our pit lane team who not have all reasons to celebrate after so many setbacks.”
Even though they have missed the 200th Porsche victory in the history of the VLN season, the drivers of the Haribo Racing Team were quite happy. “We have worked very hard this weekend to improve the performance of the Porsche”, said Alzen. “Finally, we had found a very good setup – nevertheless, the Frikadelli Porsche is currently the ultimate benchmark within the nine-eleven. We had a very good strategy but I was not able to keep the pace of Patrick Huisman in the first part of the race.” Alzen will also take the start of the eight VLN race in the Haribo Racing Team after his BMW Z4 GT3 was so badly damaged in the last race. In October, the Bavarian GT3 Coupé will most probably then again be used in competition.
„It is fantastic to be back on the podium now finally“, said Krumbach. “We have constantly improved our performance throughout the last races – place five at the sixth round was ok and the third place was the maximum today that we could achieve. We are nevertheless happy with this excellent result.”
Due to the heavy rainfalls in the middle part of the race, a lot of the top drivers retired. Right from the start, the action was dominated by Frikadelli-Racing. The triple season winners retired after an accident on the wet track in lap 18 at the “Eiskurve”. Bad luck also for the Team Falken Motorsports in another GT3-Porsche. Peter Dumbreck (Great Britain) and Alexandre Imperatori (China) set the fastest time in practice with 8:15,379 minutes and gained pole position. The driver duo went into the lead after the Frikadelli Team applied a wrong strategy in returning to the pits for a tyre change one lap too late in the rain. They were in the lead for seven laps before they had to retire after an accident in the section Kallenhard in the 19th lap. After a great performance, Stefan Mücke (Berlin) and Pedro Lamy (Portugal), too, had to stop the race in their Aston Martin Vantage GT3, also due to an accident in lap twelve on the wet track. Whilst the three aforementioned teams stranded on the track without being involved in an incident, Sascha Bert (Ober-Ramstadt/ Germany) in the McLaren MP4 12C was involved in an accident. At the beginning of the 22nd lap, the British super sports car had a collision in the first corner with a car to be lapped. The McLaren was so badly damaged that the Dörr team was not able to continue. They were holding sixth place at the moment of their retiremen.
Behind the top three finished Harald Hennes (Eschweiler/ Germany), Thomas Gerling (Uchte/ Germany), Thomas Kappler (Bad Saulgau/ Germany) and Peter Scharmach (New Zealand) in the fastest Cup-Porsche in fourth place. The series winners in this class, Adam Osieka (Meuspath/ Germany), Christopher Mies (Heiligenhaus/ Germany) and Steve Jans (Luxembourg), did not dominate their class for the first time in the season and finished fifth. Sixth place went to Niclas Kentenich (Neuss/ Germany), Henry Walkenhorst (Melle/ Germany), Peter Posavac (Essen/ Germany) and Anders Buchardt (Norway) in the BW Z4 GT3 of the team Walkenhorst Motorsport powered by Dunlop. They were followed by the two Audi TTRS2 of LMS Engineering in seventh and eighth places respectively. They turned out to be the fastest driver of front wheel driven cars.
After the highlight of the year, the 2014 season of the VLN endurance racing championship is slowly coming onto the finish straight. The calendar includes the 46th ADAC Barbarossapreis to take place on 13th September as eighth round of the championship. The race organised by the MSC Sinzig will run over the usual distance of four hours.
