The Team Peugeot RCZ Nokia celebrated their sixth consecutive class win in the VLN endurance racing championship. Michael Bohrer, Stéphane Caillet, Jürgen Nett and Timo Frings finished the ninth of ten championship races in their Peugeot RCZ 2.0 HDi FAP with an advance of one lap ahead of their team mates Cyrus Ayari, Olivier Perez, Eric Robert and Julien Rueflin. “Today’s success again is the result of a brilliant team work”, said team manager Timo Frings. “A really big thank you to everybody. We will just proceed similarly in two weeks time.”
Diesel pole position in qualifying
In the timed practice already, the drivers of the two dynamic sports coupé race cars confirmed their ambitions and finished into first and second positions in the category of Diesel cars. “We had a fantastic grip with our Kumho tyres, despite the low temperatures”, said Nett happily. Even though the weather in the Eifel region this time was very sunny, the asphalt temperatures at the start and finish straight were minus four degrees at the beginning of the practice session.
Start driver Caillet in the white RCZ went right away into the lead of the Diesel cars on the very first metres and was able to constantly move up in the overall classification. In his last lap before the scheduled driver change to Nett, Caillet was involved in a collision. “I slowed down as prescribed under yellow flags”, explained the Frenchman. “The Renault which was following behind and which I had passed beforehand became aware of the situation too late and crashed into my car.” Caillet arrived at the pits with a damaged tie rod. The mechanics of the Peugeot team managed to carry out the necessary repair in less than eight minutes time but the team mates in the black RCZ had of course moved ahead. “It will be difficult now to win the class”, said Nett. But just after the VLN champion of the year 1987 had rejoined the race, the race was stopped with the red flag. There had been too many and partly serious accidents around the approximately 25 kilometres long track. Nett: “Due to the stopping of the race, the last lap was not classified so that our tie rod change did practically not happen. We were really lucky this time.”
Nett then took the restart and the Peugeot dealer said happily: “Finally I am also still able to start a race today.” He changed to Bohrer after five laps. The final stint was completed by Timo Frings. „This was a really tough race, with a lot of damaged cars. I was several times overtaken by cars under yellow flags. In addition, the sun was very low which also caused some problems. We have successfully avoided any too close fights and thus celebrated another one-two win for Peugeot”, said Jürgen Nett gladly.
