Due to heavy fog, the eighth round of the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring was not started. At 14:05hrs, VLN Managing Director Karl Mauer (Üxheim/ Germany) announced the cancellation of the 46th ADAC Barbarossapreis organised by the MSC Sinzig. “Weather conditions today made it impossible to start the race”, informed Mauer and DMSB President Hans-Joachim Stuck (Ellmau/ Germany) who was involved in the decision taken by Race Control confirmed: “It would simply not be reasonable and we trust that all the participants and the spectators will understand the decision.”
“Visibility was so poor that we could not decide to start the race”, explained Clerk of the Course Peter Bröcher (Olpe/ Germany), who, in close co-ordination with Race Control of the organising MSC Sinzig and the VLN, waited until the very last moment before he finally announced the cancellation: “In addition to the poor visibility for the participants, it was in particular also the fact that the Medical Helicopter could not fly under the prevailing conditions which was a crucial factor in taking that decision. There was furthermore no kind of confirmation in the various weather forecasts that the situation would improve so that even the shortening of the distance was not an option.”
The VLN timed practice in the morning also was started with a small delay due to the weather. The session was started under yellow flags all around the Grand Prix Circuit. Visibility at the Nordschleife was still pretty good at this moment. After about 50 minutes, Race Control then felt impelled to stop the practice with the red flag. “From this moment the fog became worse and worse”, said Bröcher.
The fastest time was achieved by Klaus Abbelen, Sabine Schmitz (both from Barweiler), Patrick Huisman (Netherlands) and Patrick Pilet (France) in the Porsche 911 GT3 R entered by the team Frikadelli-Racing and with a time of 8:05.714 minutes. Their advance ahead of second placed Hubert Haupt (Munich), Andreas Simonsen (Sweden) and Yelmer Buurman (Netherlands) in a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 of Black Falcon was 5.337 seconds. Behind them followed Peter Dumbreck (Great Britain) and Wolf Henzler (Nürtingen/ Germany) in a Porsche 911 GT3 R of the team Falken Motorsports, Rudi Adams (Ahütte/ Germany), Kevin Estre (Austria) and Arno Klasen (Karlshausen/ Germany) in a McLaren MP4 12C GT3 entered by Dörr Motorsport as well as the Haribo-Porsche driven by Uwe Alzen (Betzdorf/ Germany) and Mike Stursberg (Wermelskirchen/ Germany).
On account of the cancellation of the 46th ADAC Barbarossapreis the classification of the 2014 VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring will probably be made up of the results achieved in nine races – there will hence be only one void result at the end of the season.
The ninth round of the season will take place on 11 October. The ROWE DMV 250-Meilen-Rennen organised by the MSC Monheim will run over the usual four hour distance.
