At the 6h Qualifying Race organised by the ADAC Nordrhein, the VLN teams indeed had reason to celebrate as the regular starters in the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring dominated their competitors in nine classes at the Nordschleife. To me mentioned primarily the Pixum Team Adrenalin Motorsport which is based nearby Offenbach, part of the Frankfurt Thein-Main urban area, and which, with their wins in classes V4, V5 and in the BMW M235i Racing Cup, claimed the greatest number of victories from amongst the VLN teams. In the fight about the overall victory, the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Haribo Racing and the BMW M6 GT3 of Rowe Racing had to concede defeat. The victory went to HTP Motorsport with drivers Maximilian Buhk, Christian Vietoris, Thomas Jäger and Dominik Baumann behind the steering wheel in the Mercedes-AMG GT3.
All the teams were struggling with their tyre choice due to the changing weather conditions and throughout the entire 6h race duration, very close fights about the lead were provided by the GT3 vehicles in class SP9. In total, there were fourteen changes in the lead between six cars.
For Uwe Alzen, who shared the cockpit in the Haribo-Mercedes with Lance David Arnold, Maximilian Götz and Jan Seyffarth, the traffic in the first laps resulted in a slight collision and they dropped back to the end of the field. With his huge experience at the Nordschleife, Alzen nevertheless pushed forward from the rear in a superb tour de force. He then changed the car to his team mate in third position. “That was hard work, really. But I fought my way back”, said Alzen who finally finished second together with his team colleagues and with a gap of 54.109 seconds behind the winners.
Whiles the Rowe team finished on a podium position for the first time at the Nürburgring with their new BMW M6 GT3 (Alexander Sims, Maxime Martin, Philipp Eng), Manthey Racing with the Porsche 911 GT3 R (Jörg Bergmeister, Matteo Cairoli) had to be satisfied with fourth place. They did not make it into the top three as they received a time penalty for speeding in a Code-60 zone.
Nobody could in contrast stop the Manthey Porsche in the classes SP7 and SPX. Steve Smith, Reinhold Renger and Nils Riemer claimed a victory with their Porsche 911 GT3 Cup MR in class SP7, and Christoph Breuer, Christian Gebhardt and Lars Kern scored a win in class SPX with the Porsche Cayman GT4.
Another Porsche Cayman was brilliantly driven by Christian Büllesbach, Andreas Schelter, Carsten Ohlinger and Dag von Garrel in class V5. This was one of the three victories for the Pixum Team Adrenalin Motorsport, as also Klaus-Dieter Frommer, Michael Hofmann and Ionnis Smyrlis won the class V4 with the BMW E90 and Norbert Fischer, Christian Konnerth and Gabriele Piana became first in the classification of the BMW M235i Racing Cup; they pushed the Cup winners of the first round, Alexander Mies and Michael Schrey, down to second place. The two Bonk drivers were supported by Jan Sluis in this 6h Race and the driver trio successfully defended their second place against Heiko Eichenberger, Friedhelm Mihm and Max Kottmayr of the Team Securtal Sorg Rennsport.
Another car of Sorg, a BMW 335i in class SP8T, was driven by Niels Borum and Jeppe Degnbol Moller who managed to drop Tom Blomqvist, Alex Lambertz and Marc Ehret in the BMW M235i Racing Cup of Walkenhorst Motorsport down to second place.
Three more class wins were scored by VLN teams with drivers Max, Jens and Moritz Kranz in a Porsche Cayman of GetSpeed Performance in class Cup 3, with Fiedel Leib, Jonas Carlsson and Nico Verdonck in the Porsche Cayman of Prosport-Performance in class SP6 and finally with Aurel Schoeller, Andre Kuhn and Philip in a Porsche 911 of Black Falcon in class V6.
