A number of top teams from the VLN endurance championship Nürburgring has good chances to take the overall victory at the “45th ADAC Zurich 24h Race” from 25th to 28th May 2017.
Manthey-Racing has already won the first two VLN races of the season with a Porsche 911 GT3 R. With five overall wins, the team (together with Schnitzer-BMW) is in any case the most successful squad at this traditional long-distance race. The spearhead of Manthey-Racing is made up of Romain Dumas, Frédéric Makowiecki, Patrick Pilet and Richard Lietz. The two other Porsche 911 GT3 R are driven by Otto Klohs, Robert Renauer, Mathieu Jaminet and Matteo Cairoli as well as by „Steve Smith“, „Randy Walls“, Hari Proczyk and Sven Müller.
Apart from Manthey-Racing, two other Porsche teams represent the VLN at the 24h Race: Frikadelli Racing and Falken Motorsports. The professional crew in the Frikadelli car is made up of Norbert Siedler, Michael Christensen, Klaus Bachler and Lucas Luhr, the cockpit of the Falken-Porsche 911 GT3 R will be shared between Martin Ragginger, Dirk Werner, Laurens Vanthoor and Jörg Bergmeister.
The Team Black Falcon, overall winner of the 2016 24h Race, has entered three cars for this classical marathon race. Last year’s winners Maro Engel, Manuel Metzger and Adam Christodoulou will be behind the steering wheel in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 with start number 1, this time together with Yelmer Buurman. A candidate for victory will probably also be the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Haribo Racing which will be driven by Uwe Alzen, Lance David Arnold, Maximilian Götz and Renger van der Zande.
At the latest since their victory at the 6h Qualification Race, one should also keep track of Phoenix Racing, already four times winner of the 24h Race: Mike Rockenfeller, Frank Stippler, Dennis Busch and Nicolaj Moeller Madsen are entered for the Audi R8 LMS. The strong group of Audi race cars at the 24h Race includes amongst others the successful participant in the VLN, Land-Motorsport, to represent Audi Sport officially. The first Audi R9 LMS of the Audi Sport Team Land will be driven by Connor de Phillippi, Christopher Mies, Christopher Haase and Pierre Kaffer and the second one by de Phillippi, Mies, Markus Winkelhock and Kelvin van der Linde.
The most successful make in the history of the 24h Race is however BMW: Since 1970, the brand from the Munich factory has scored the total of 19 overall wins. From amongst the group of regular participants in the VLN, Falken Motorsports will be represented at the 24h Race with one BMW M6 GT3, Rowe Racing with two cars of the same type and Walkenhorst Motorsport with even three of those. The Rowe driver crews are: Alexander Sims, Richard Westbrook, Nick Catsburg and Markus Palttala as well as Philipp Eng, Alexander Sims, Maxime Martin and Marc Basseng. The drivers in the Walkenhorst top car are Christian Krognes, Michele Di Martino, Matias Henkola and Nico Menzel. Peter Dumbreck, Alexandre Imperatori, Stef Dusseldorp and Marco Seefried have been entered for the Falken-BMW M6 GT3.
It will also be interesting to see the performance of the two SCG009C prototypes of US billionaire James Glickenhaus and of the Ferrari 488 GT3 of the Wochenspiegel Team Monschau.
