The 49th Adenauer ADAC Rundstrecken-Trophy has made history in many respects. With their Porsche 911 GT3 R, Lance-David Arnold and Norbert Siedler celebrated the second victory in a row for the Frikadelli Racing Team at their “home game”. The German-Austrian driver duo thus demonstrated in the race, which took place in bright sunshine and under summer temperatures, in an impressive way that their previous three-years dry spell is now definitely over. Right behind the race winners, Georg and Leonard Weiss were fighting out their father-son duel. In the end, it was the junior in the Ferrari 488 GT3 who was for the first time one step ahead and left his father, who was sharing the steering wheel in the sister car with Oliver Kainz and Jochen Krumbach, behind into third place.
“I am incredibly proud”, said Georg Weiss after the race. “It took me so many years to finish in the top three at the VLN for the first time. Leonard made it after only one and a half years. That is an absolutely fantastic achievement.” The secret of the success of Leonard Weiss is the intensive work of the whole WTM team, specifically together with mentor Christian Menzel. “We have worked very hard in the set-up session on the Friday, in the morning on the Grand Prix Circuit and in the afternoon at the Nordschleife”, explains Leonard Weiss. “So I was able to make a big step forward.” Christian and Nico Menzel, too, celebrated a premiere. It was the first time that they both were together on the podium. “That was a very special moment when we climbed up on the podium together”, said Nico. Christian added: “It will certainly take me some more days to really understand what has happened.”
The Frikadelli Racing Team had a perfect race at the fourth round of the 2018 VLN season. Norbert Siedler took pole position in the qualifying with a time of 7:56.644 minutes. In the race, too, the driver duo dictated the pace and achieved the fastest lap time with 8:04.527 minutes. “The ultimate achievement”, said Siedler.
Behind the top three, there was a close fight about position four. At the finish, these two cars were separated by only 0.130 second. Vincent Kolb and Frank Stippler in the Audi R8 LMS of Phoenix Racing finally won the battle and thus confirmed their strong performance of race three, just as did Klaus Abbelen, Sabine Schmitz and Felipe Fernández Laser in the second Frikadelli Porsche. Into sixth place finished Patrick Assenheimer and Christian Hohenadel in a Mercedes-AMG GT3 of AutoArena Motorsport. They were followed by “Dieter Schmidtmann“ and Heiko Hammel in seventh place with their Renault R.S.01, the fastest car which was not a GT3 race car. Rudi Adams, Andreas Ziegler and David Pittard took the chequered flag in the BMW M6 GT3 in eighth place.
Ralf Schall sets an exclamation mark
Ralf Schall celebrated a historic result. Together with Christopher Gerhard, he took his 100th VLN class win. The 48-years old race driver is thus the first driver to enter the hundredth in the class winners’ statistics which has been introduced in 1990 and constantly updated since then. “A lot of things went through my head in the last two laps”, says Schall. “I remembered my first class win when I won my first race in 1994 together with my father with a Mercedes 190 in the snow. I gained a lot of victories together with him. And I am specifically proud that our team still comprises staff members who supported us with great passion already at that time. Fantastic.”
Another change in the championship lead
With their fourth class win in a row, Norbert Fischer, Christian Konnerth and Daniel Zils went into the lead of the series classification. In the Porsche Cayman of the Pixum Team Adrenalin Motorsport, the driver trio once again left all their competitors behind in the class of VLN production cars up to 3,000 cc cylinder capacity. The same applies for Mike Jäger, Stephan Köhler and Christian Kohlhaas who dominated the class of VLN Specials over 4,000 cc cylinder capacity with the racing one Ferrari 458 for the fourth time. The Ferrari trio is shown in second championship position with the small gap of 0.17 points behind.
Results and standings remain provisional
Just before the end of the first half of the 49th Adenauer ADAC Rundstrecken-Trophy, there was an unclear situation at the Döttinger Höhe. There was a group of almost 30 cars and it appears that some of them may have ignored the ban on overtaking. Due to the ongoing race, it was impossible for Race Control to clarify the situation straight away. They referred the matter, as is usually the case, to the DMSB Stewards to investigate the issue after the race. After the race, the latter studied various video footage to get a clear picture. It is target of the panel of Stewards to clarify the facts as far as possible and to impose penalties for infringements. As this procedure could not be concluded on-site, the results of the fourth round were declared provisional and suspended.
“A completely normal procedure under sporting law will not be initiated, just like it is common practice for Stewards’ decisions taken on the spot”, explains Michael Bork, VLN Head of Sport. “The various cases will have to be evaluated by the Stewards, parties involved will have to be heard and decisions to be taken – including the possibility to appeal. That will take some time. We hope of course that the procedure will not take too long so that the results can be declared final in due course.”
