At the VLN launch of the season, Manthey-Racing had right away two reasons to celebrate. Apart from the overall win of Romain Dumas, Fred Makowiecki and Patrick Pilet, the team with drivers Otto Klohs, Sven Müller and Robert Renauer were honoured on Saturday evening as the first winners in the Pro-Am-classification of the GT3 class. The driver trio finished in 17th overall position with their Porsche 911 GT3 R and became thus fastest car in this new classification.
“When, after four hours racing at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the race car is parked in the parc fermé, has not sustained any kind of damage and the drivers are happy, then I am happy, too. This is the primary target”, explains amateur driver Otto Klohs. “Considering our 17th overall place and the win in the Pro-Am classification with a gap of only 5:17 minutes behind the leaders, I think we’ve done everything right.”
Into second place of the Pro-Am classification finished Frikadelli-Racing. Klaus Abbelen, Andreas Ziegler and Norbert Siedler finished 21st overall with their Porsche 911 GT3 R. “That was brilliant”, said Ziegler who joined the team of Frikadelli this season after his first eight laps stint and was very happy about their performance. “The car is very demanding but it is fantastic to drive – even though I struggled with some oversteering.”
Third in the Pro-Am classification became “Steve Smith“, Reinhold Renger and Hari Proczyk in another Manthey-Porsche 911 GT3 R. “Today’s race was a test race for us as we missed on practice day due to a collision on Friday which was not our fault”, explained “Steve Smith”. “It was difficult to find our rhythm in the race as there were a lot of yellow flag situations. We then used the time to focus all of our attention onto the Nordschleife and the GT3 car which is new for us.”
