At the end of the second round of the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring, a new name was added to the list of winners. At the 37th DMV 4 Hour Race, Jochen Krumbach (Eschweiler/ Germany) celebrated his first victory in this popular racing series for amateur and professional drivers. Together with Porsche works driver Marc Lieb (Ludwigsburg/ Germany), he finished the race organised by the Racing Association Düren successfully in the Porsche 911 GT3 R entered my Manthey-Racing. “I am full of emotions”, admitted Krumbach who has been competing in the VLN since 1993. “Even though I had finished on the podium quite a few times, a victory is something totally different. It will take some days for me to realize this fantastic result achieved today.” In the presence of BMW Motorsport Director Jens Marquardt (Munich), the top three in the overall classification were completed by the two BMW Z4 GT3 entered by Schubert-Motorsport. Uwe Alzen (Betzdorf/ Germany) and Nico Bastian (Frankfurt/ Germany), who had been in the race lead for quite a distance, hereby had to be satisfied with position three behind Claudia Hürtgen (Aachen/ Germany), Dominik Schwager (Eisenhofen/ Germany) and Dirk Adorf (Michelbach/ Germany). The race was stopped 13 minutes before the scheduled distance of four hours had been completed as it started to hail at the Nordschleife. A one hour summary will be shown in channel Sport1 on Wednesday, 18th April, at 17:30hrs.
In the timed practice, the BMW crew Vita4One with drivers Marco Wittmann (Markt Erlbach/ Germany), Jens Klingmann (Leimen/ Germany), Ricardo van der Ende (Netherlands) and Mathias Lauda (Austria) had gained pole position. Klingmann set the fastest time with 8:15.624 minutes, 0.587 seconds faster than Marc Basseng (Neusalza Spremberg/ Germany), Marcel Fässler (Switzerland) and Andrea Piccini (Italy ) in the Audi R8 LMS entered by Phoenix-Racing. The BMW of the team around former DTM driver Michael Bartels (Plettenberg/ Germany) had to stop the race after twelve laps due to technical failure. The Phoenix team was fighting in the top 3 for quite a distance and finally dropped back only as a consequence of their pit strategy in combination with the early stopping of the race. They finally finished into fifth place behind the Porsche 911 GT3 R of the team Timbuli Racing. Finishing fourth, Norbert Siedler (Austria), Marco Seefried (Wemding/ Germany) and Dennis Busch (Bensheim/ Germany) thus confirmed their good performance shown at the opening round. Behind Sabine Schmitz, Klaus Abbelen (both from Barweiler/ Germany), Christopher Brück (Cologne) and Patrick Huisman (Netherlands) in the Porsche 911 GT3 R entered by the MSC Adenau, the two Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 of the team ROWE RACING were classified in seventh and eighth places. “I am convinced that we would also have won on our own if the race had not been stopped”, said Lieb. “Our Porsche was running perfectly today, we only had some difficulties with the slick tyres on the wet track – but we’ve never been really good under these conditions. We would have had to proceed to another refuel stop in the penultimate lap but our advance was big enough.” Adorf was happy with their second position: “After an unlucky qualifying with position 14 on the grid, we had been able to catch up considerably in the race even though this was not always easy in the traffic. We have completed the race without any mistake.” Bastian, winner in the Mini Challenge of last year, was very happy finishing on the podium for the second time already, right at the second race with the BMW Z4 GT: “I have great fun in racing with the Z4. Even though we were so close to a victory today, I am happy with our third position. It is great to be part of the Schubert Team – I can learn a lot from all of the drivers.”
The third overall place on the podium was not the only excellent result for Uwe Alzen at this race. Together with Philipp Wlazik (Gladbeck/ Germany) and Robert Renauer (Jedenhofen/ Germany), he also drove the fastest Cup-Porsche into ninth position overall. The victory in group H was gained by Andreas and Ralf Schall (both from Dornstadt/ Germany) in their Mercedes-Benz 190 entered by the Black Falcon Team TDM Friction. The group of VLN standard production cars was won by Dieter Weidenbrück (Wesseling/ Germany) and Markus Schmickler (Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler/ Germany) in the BMW Z4 of the team Scuderia Augustusburg Brühl. In the lead of the championship after two of the ten scheduled rounds is now Dominik Brinkmann (Dortmund/ Germany) and Ullrich Andree (Cologne), who, together with Christian Krognes from Norway, achieved their second win in class SP3T (VLN Specials up to 2,000 cc cylinder capacity with turbo) with the Volkswagen Scircco entered by LMS Engineering.
The VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring will be resumed very quickly. In two weeks time already, on 28th of April, the third race is on the calendar with the 54th ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup. As a final test ahead of the ADAC Zurich 24h Race in May, the event will host the Touring Car Revival with a number of historic DTM cars contesting demonstration runs at the Nürburgring and providing a special entertainment programme for the spectators.
