After a break of about seven weeks, the VLN endurance championship Nürburgring will finally restart on the 24th of June with its next qualifying round. The VLN calendar includes the 59th ADAC ACAS H&R Cup as the third race of the 2017 season.
The Nürburgring 24h Race has meanwhile gone down in history whilst the VLN endurance series at the Nürburgring is now taking up speed. In this biggest grassroots series of the world, the true and original stars will from now on be in the foreground and the Nürburgring experts will be amongst themselves again. The homogenous field promises to provide exciting motorsport action.
The class of GT3 race cars will be well-balanced. Five out of the eight cars will hereby be classified in the new Pro-Am category where trophies will this year be awarded to crews made up of professionals and privateers. After two victories at the first two races, the Manthey Porsche driven by Otto Klohs, Mathieu Jaminet and Lars Kern will again be amongst the top favourites. Their rivals – Manthey has entered another nine elven with drivers ‘Steve Smith’, ‚Randy Walls’ and Sven Müller – will however not only come from the own racing team. The Wochenspiegel Team Monschau with the spectacular Ferrari 488 GT3 will have as good chances as the Frikadelli-Amateur-Porsche and the Landgraf-Quartett with Klaus Landgraf, Kai Riemer, Markus and Stefan Schmickler in a Mercedes AMG GT3.
Two more top cars have been entered by Land-Motorsport – for the first time with drivers Jeffrey Schmidt and Michael Ammermüller in an Audi R8 LMS – and by Frikadelli-Racing with Alexander Müller and Klaus Bachler. And not to forget the BMW Z4 GT3 of Walkenhorst Motorsport which is so popular with the fans and driven by Peter Posavac, Alex Lambertz and Claudia Hürtgen.
Another highlight in the top group at the third VLN race will again be provided by the spectacular Renault R.S. 01 of Heiko Hammel and ‘Dieter Schmidtmann’.
Additional competitors in the TCR class
The TCR class which was introduced in the VLN in the season 2017 is getting more and more attractive. For the first time this year, Hannu Luostarinen and Volker Strycek in the Kissling Motorsport Opel Astra TCR will be on the starting grid of the third round, in addition to all the other well-known protagonists. The provisional number of nine cars which are entered already reflects the impressive variety of brands in this class due to the internationally well-established touring cars regulations. In addition to the Astra, Audi RS3 LMS, Honda Civic Type R, Peugeot 308 Racing Cup, Seat Leon and Volkswagen Golf GTI will be represented. And the list includes some more prominent VLN teams with Bonk Motorsport, mathilda racing and LMS Engineering.
Strong classes provide important points for the championship
The starting grid of the third VLN race which will again be held on the 24.358 kilometres long combination of the Nürburgring Grand Prix Circuit, short version, and the Nordschleife will figure about 150 cars. The strongest class hereby, the one with the greatest number of competitors, will be the Cup 5 for BMW M235i Racing Cup vehicles. 20 cars are shown on the provisional entry list and the class winners will thus score important championship points.
A similar number of participants have entered classes V4 and V5 for production cars with a capacity of up to 2,500 and 3,000 cc respectively and these 16 and 14 cars which are entered will also be able to mark many championship points. The numbers of competitors in the various classes has since ever been an important factor in the VLN endurance championship Nürburgring as the numbers of points allocated in the various classes for the drivers’ championship depend on the number of cars entered in that class – the more cars, the more points are distributed.
Homogenous field
As already mentioned earlier, the field towards the end of the first third of the season is very homogenous. The 43 sophisticated race cars in the class of VLN Specials will compete against 43 production-based competition touring cars in the classes of VLN production cars. The popular Cup classes of BMW, Opel, Porsche and TMG are moreover an important pillar in this grassroots series. The protagonists in these classes are fighting with identical material against each other for victories and points in the VLN classifications and for victories in the single-brand competitions. Exciting battles for positions can be expected from the impressive number of 53 Cup vehicles entered for the 59th ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup.
Classical automobiles in group H
The top of the top in the entry list are the group H cars. Both the fans and the owners are enthusiastic about these classical race cars which can partly look back onto a really long history. One of the drivers is Jürgen Freiburg. He shares the steering wheel in a VW Pioneer Fast Racing Corrado with Norbert Kraft. The ambitious driver duo normally competes in six VLN races per year, all of those taking place after the 24h Race. So Freiburg and Kraft will celebrate their personal debut of the season at this third VLN race. Apart from them, six other group H cars will be at the start.
