1996: Zarkowski catching up in a superior way
After the start to the eighth VLN race, solo driver Jürgen Alzen was first of all able to move away from all of his competitors. Yet, he made a mistake in his fuel strategy and ran out of fuel at the Döttinger Höhe. Karl Maasen and Michael Irmgartz in a Porsche Carrera were the beneficiaries. Maasen, suffering a flue, however encountered some problems to keep the high pace. So Peter Zakowski, who took over the steering wheel in the former DTM-Mercedes from Hans-Jürgen Tiemann at around mid-race, saw his chance to start an attack. At the beginning of his stint, he was about 90 seconds behind and turned this into an advantage of 30 seconds until the finish over Maasen/ Irmgartz. Maasen secured second place with a narrow gap of 0.38 seconds ahead of the third-placed driver duo Döbler/ Hulverscheid.
2006: Porsche taking revenge – victory for Land-Motorsport
With pole position, fastest race lap and race win, the team of Land-Motorsport with drivers Patrick Simon and Marc Basseng dominated the eighth VLN race convincingly.
The dramatic fight about the following places in the last race lap could nonetheless hardly have been more exciting. Alzen/ Messer, Bäder/ Hagenmeyer/ Gedlich and Mamerow/ Mamerow were the main characters – all of the three cars within four seconds only at the approach to the last corner. The first one who had to abandon the fight was Thomas Messer who made his season’s debut in the team of Alzen. After a very close duel, he spun on the GP circuit and lost contact to the group. Tobias Hagenmeyer who was able to study the tail of the Mamerow-Porsche in detail and from close by throughout the following almost 20 kilometres realized an increased smoke development at the rear of the Porsche when they joined the Döttinger Höhe.
His strategy to wait for the retirement of his rival and thus to inherit the second place proved to be wrong. The assumed engine failure turned out to be a less severe damage on the wheel hub which did not compel Mamerow to slow down. After the race, Hagenmeyer was upset about himself: “I should have been able to pass him!” He had to be satisfied with third position instead,
2011: Arno Klasen celebrating his 25th overall win
Bright sunshine around the Nürburgring Nordschleife and proud winners on the podium – Arno Klasen celebrated a historic victory at the 43rd ADAC Barbarossapreis. For the 25th time in his career, the 44-years old climbed onto the top position on the podium, together with Lucas Luhr. The driver duo took the chequered flag in the Porsche 911 GT3 R of Manthey-Racing with a gap of 2:35.971 minutes in front of the second-placed Frank Stippler and Christopher Haase in the Audi R8 LMS of Phoenix-Racing. For the HARIBO Team Manthey, Mike Stursberg, Hans Guido Riegel and René Rast celebrated their first top three position in this most popular grassroots series of Europe. The event organised by the MSC Sinzig marked another highlight in terms of statistical figures in the current season: With Luhr and Klasen, the series saw the eighth new winner team in the eighth race and the victory of the Porsche 911 GT3 R was the seventh make gaining a victory in the VLN of the current year. Never before in the 35 years of history of the series had there been such a variety.
