Prestigious victory for ROWE RACING at the 6h Race

At the 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen, the highlight of the VLN endurance racing season at the Nürburgring, ROWE RACING demonstrated in an impressive way the performance of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 and of the team’s driver trio. After 6:01:29,541 hours race time, Thomas Jäger (Munich), Alexander Roloff (Berlin) and Jan Seyffarth (Querfurt-Leimbach/ Germany) took the chequered flag with a clear advance ahead of their pursuers. The team has completed 42 laps and thus tied the current record in distance at the 6h race scored in 2012. The ROWE team, however, completed the 1023,498 kilometres in 5:26.550 minutes less so that they will go down in the history of statistics as winners of the fastest 6h Race. Their advance ahead of the second placed team of Raeder Motorsport with drivers Frank Biela (Monaco), Christian Hohenadel (Quirschied/ Germany) and Thomas Mutsch (Bitburg/ Germany) in the Audi R8 LMS ultra was 54.451 seconds. The top three and the podium were completed by another Audi team with drivers Christopher Haase (Kulmbach/ Germany), Luca Ludwig (Bornheim/ Germany) and Christer Jöns (Ingelheim/ Germany) with a gap of 1:40.577 minutes to the leaders. A one hour summary of the 6h Race will be broadcasted in channel Sport1 on Wednesday, 8th August, at 17:30hrs.

With a time of 8:07.736 minutes, Jäger achieved pole position for his team ROWE RACING. Right after the race start, Seyffart managed to stay in the lead. It was only during the pit stops that their competitors were able to get a feeling on how it is to be in the lead. “I succeeded in setting a perfect lap in qualifying”, said Jäger. “The temperatures were absolutely perfect for our tyres and there was almost no traffic in my fast lap. Our package was also perfect during the race.” The final stage of the race then became exiting again for all the teams. Gentle rainfalls set in at the area of the Grand Prix Circuit and made the last part extremely exciting so that the winning team could only be certain about their victory when they finally crossed the finish line. “We had a good feeling and a lot of confidence in Alex who was driving the car at that moment. But a lot of things can happen under these conditions.” The Raeder Team was not able to repeat their fantastic win from last year. In 2011, Biela and Hohenadel had won the highlight of the season in their Audi TT-RS which was clearly inferior in performance compared to the other race cars. “We are absolutely happy with our second place – a fantastic race”, was the comment of Biela who was in close fights with his make colleagues, temporarily separated by a few seconds only. “That was a battle at the limits even though you probably are a little more cautious when you fight with a make colleague in order not to take too big risks.” And Jöns confirmed: “We did not do anything to leave the field victorious for the other. But we couldn’t make it closer to the lead with our Raeder-R8. Position three is nevertheless a good result for us. Even though I have already won the championship, I never made it on the podium in the overall classification so far but succeeded today.”

Behind the top three finished Norbert Siedler (Austria), Marco Seefried (Wemding/ Germany) and Dennis Busch (Bensheim/ Germany) in fourth place in their Porsche 911 GT3 R of the team Timbuli Racing and became fastest of the sports car manufacturer from Zuffenhausen. Into fifth place finished Rudi Adams (Ahütte/ Germany), Arno Klasen (Karlshausen/ Germany), Henri Moser (Switzerland) and Kai Riemer (Stuttgart) in the McLaren MP4 entered by Dörr-Motorsport. Behind the second Phoenix-Audi-R8, which was struggling with technical problems at the beginning of the race, finished Uwe Alzen (Betzdorf/ Germany), Philipp Wlazik (Gladbeck/ Germany) and Niclas Kentenich (Neuss/ Germany) in the fastest Cup-Porsche into place seven. The comeback of Timo Bernhard (Dittweiler/ Germany), who had to take a break from the beginning of the season due to his injury after a test accident, ended already after a few laps. The engine of the Porsche 911 GT3 R of Manthey-Racing, driven by the Porsche works driver together with Jochen Krumbach (Eschweiler/ Germany) and Romain Dumas (Switzerland) failed in lap twelve.

The results of the 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennens are suspended and subject to a protest decision to be taken in class SP10 (GT4 vehicles) so the championship classification, too, remains provisional for the moment.