Marc Basseng and Land-Motorsport, a combination that is used to success in the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring. Together with Nordschleife specialist Basseng, the team from the ‘Westerwald’, a low mountain range on the right bank of the river Rhine, has already celebrated 19 victories in the VLN series. After a five years break of Land Motorsport in the VLN, the successful team pairing will come back in the season 2016 to chase again for fast lap times. Considering their history, the target in the new Audi R8 LMS is more or less self-explanatory. “I am of course very familiar with Wolfgang Land and his team and I know that we are capable of winning with the new Audi and this experienced team,”, says Basseng. “We will, however, have to fight against a huge field of GT3 cars, all of them with top drivers. So it will not be an easy task. Anyway, I wish to celebrate the 20th VLN victory together with the team.”
In addition to all of his sporting ambitions, Basseng wishes to also improve his figures in the statistics. If he succeeds in gaining the 20th race win with the team of Land-Motorsport, the 37-years old will be very close to the top three in the all-times VLN table of overall victories. Basseng’s track record currently shows 26 race wins and he is in fourth place of the table behind Jürgen Alzen (29), Ullrich Richter and Olaf Manthey (28 each). Together with Connor de Philippi from the United States, who will compete for Land-Motorsport as regular driver together with Basseng, he wishes to move further up in this statistics.
Having gained first impressions at the Nordschleife, both Basseng and the team are very optimistic. Their new race car named ‘Linda Lou’ was running without any problems at the test and set-up session on the 18th of March. On this test day, he shared the cockpit with Timo Scheider who will support Land-Motorsport at the 24h Race together with his DTM team mate Mike Rockenfeller. De Phillippi and Basseng will however be able to count on the back up of Rockenfeller already at the opening round of the 2016 VLN season on 2nd April. Basseng: “I am already full of anticipation regarding my first participation in the VLN.”
