The ninth round of the VLN endurance championship 2016 finished with a surprise. On top of the podium, Dominik and Mario Farnbacher celebrated their victory and thus provided a double premiere in the VLN. First of all, the brothers received the winners\’ laurels for the first time, they went down into the history books of the endurance championship as 214th and 215th race winners. A long-awaited result for them which they finally achieved in the Lexus TC-F Prototype. At the same time they thereby wrote another chapter in the history of the VLN as this was not only the first VLN overall victory of a Lexus but the very first one at all gained by a manufacturer from Asia.
Thomas Gerling and Hajo Müller (photo, centre) meanwhile were not able to enjoy an overall win, yet they scored their 20th class win. With the support of his team mates Dominik Thiemann and Jens Riemer, Müller crossed the finish line in the BMW E36 in first position amongst the participants in class V5 – a brilliant feat that the trio achieved already for the fifth time in the current season. Gerling on the other hand dominated the Cup2 class, together with Harald Hennes and Thomas Kappeler. The trio also celebrated their fifth class win this year in their Porsche 991 GT3 Cup.
Three other drivers finished the ninth VLN race with their tenth class wins of their career respectively: Stephan Epp won class SP3 of the Renault Clio Cup Avia Racing, together with Gerrit Holthaus, Joachim Nett and his brother Jürgen dominated their rivals in class V3 in their Bonk-Motorsport-Peugeot 306 S16 and finally Thomas von Löwis of Menar, with the support of Daniel Schellhaas, drove the Care for Climate Porsche Cayman GT4 to a victory in class SPAT.
Beginning of October, another manufacturer had already attracted a lot of attention in class SP10 when KTM made its debut in the VLN with the X-Bow GT4 – Christopher Haase and Arne Hoffmeister hereby provided a very successful premiere in winning their class.
