VLN7: Successes of statistical value

The label ‚cult‘ is being awarded all too quickly nowadays. If, however, there is a race car that can truly be referred to as cult, then it is the Opel Manta of Olaf Beckmann. At the seventh round of the VLN endurance championship Nürburgring 2016, the traditional competition touring car with the obligatory foxtail on the roof completed 35 laps and thus broke through the barrier of 50,000 VLN racing kilometres – for sure a record that will be held for eternity. It was the 111th start for the Opel Manta in the VLN and the sixteenth participation in the 6h race.

Record upgraded
Olaf Beckmann and his team mates Peter Hass, Jürgen Schulten and Volker Strycek even put an extra touch on the historic day in winning class H2 – the 49th class win for Opel Manta. This was at the same time class victory number 84 for Hass, number 51 for Beckmann and number 46 for Schulten.
As usual, Strycek was not only driving the Manta but also, together with his daughter Lena and his son Robin, the won Opel Astra OPC in class Cup1 – and here again, he could not be beaten. So he scored right two class wins on one race day and matched the performance of his colleague Hass, the second place in the historic classification (introduced in 1990). Hass and Strycek are now the closest rivals for Ralf Schall who once again won in class H4 together with Christopher Gerhardt in the TAM-racing-Porsche 997 GT3 Cup, who increased his total record of class wins up to 88 and who celebrated his 50th group win at the same time.

Viebahn following Strycek’ model
Like Strycek, Jörg Viebahn competed in the ROWE 6 Hour ADAC Ruhr-Pokal Race also as double starter. And he, too, left all of his competitors behind with the support of his respective team mates. He won in class SP10 together with Jonas Carlsson, Nicolaj Moller Madsen and Nico Verdonck in the Porsche Cayman Pro4 entered by the MSC Adenau. Together with Andreas Weiland and Bert Flossbach, he drove a Porsche 991 GT3 Cup AW with which they won class SP8. Whilst Viebahn scored his 50th and 51st class win, Weiland celebrated his 20th victory.

Trophy leaders top it off
In 2016, Marc Hennerici and Moritz Oberheim manage the challenge in the Cayman GT4 Trophy by Manthey-Racing perfectly. For the fifth time in the first season of this Cup, the driver duo of racunion Teichmann Racing pulled away from their competitors and they are in a comfortable lead in the classification. For Hennerici, this result marked his 25th class win and for Oberheim the tenth.
A tenth class victory was also scored by Stefan Müller and Markus Arndt. Together with Frank Eickholt, Müller won class SPAT with the Volvo V40 D and Arndt together with Detlef Langels class SP5 with a BMW E86 Z4 Coupé. “Christopher Tiger” meanwhile celebrated the 20th class win of his career after winning class SP3T in the Audi TTRS2 of LMS Engineering together with Stefan Wieninger.

The next jubilee for Schrey
At the second race of the season, Michael Schrey celebrated his tenth class win, he has now, after the seventh race, increased his score already onto 15. Schrey and Alexander Mies in their BMW M235i Racing Cup of Bonk Motorsport are now as before the best of the best in the VLN championship. After seven class wins in seven races, they are leading both the Cup5 classification and the VLN overall classification with a huge advance and may be crowned as the early champions already on 24th September, the eighth championship round.