The summer break in the Nürburgring Endurance Series is over. Next weekend, the traditional Nordschleife racing series will start the final third of the season with the 12h Nürburgring – and the NLS doubleheader is casting its shadow ahead: the programme includes the 63rd ADAC ACAS Cup on Saturday and the 62nd ADAC Reinoldus-Langstreckenrennen on Sunday. Each race will run over a distance of six hours through the green hell. Day tickets for Saturday and Sunday are available online at vln.de/tickets. In addition, both races will be broadcasted in full length in a livestream at vln.de.
Debut in the Nürburgring Endurance Series: On Saturday, the entire Grand Prix circuit – including the AMG Arena and Müllenbachschleife – will for the first time be contested in combination with the Nordschleife. The timed practice will take place in the morning between 8 and 9:40 am. The start of the race will be at 3:30 p.m. and, with a race duration of six hours, will continue into the evening hours. On Sunday, everything will be back to normal at NLS7: qualifying from 8:30 to 10 a.m., race start at 12 noon. And then the normal NLS variant will be run again, with the short connection of the Grand Prix circuit and the Nordschleife.
Even though the 12h Nürburgring will be two separate rounds this year – the protagonists are eager to shine this weekend, because the two six-hour races will provide fat points for the championship. With this in mind, some of the top teams have called on the services of reinforcements. Nicki Thiim will start in the Dörr Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage GT3 alongside brothers Ben and Phil Dörr. Marek Böckmann will also compete for PROsport-Racing in a British super sports car, together with Maxime Dumarey and Christoph Breuer. Stefan Aust, ‘Jacob Schell’ and Luca Ludwig will start alongside Christian Kohlhaas in the Ferrari 296 GT3 from racing one. And Adam Christodoulou will join Charles Putman, Charles Espenlaub and Shane Lewis in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 from CP Racing. One of the three BMW M4 GT3s from Walkenhorst Motorsport will be on the grid in a completely new constellation. Jörg Breuer, Carrie Schreiner, Charles Weerts and Christian Bollrath will take turns at the wheel. In the top class they will be up against Nordschleife cracks like Klaus Bachler and David Pittard in the #3 and Dennis Fetzer and Martin Ragginger in the #4. Falken won the 12h Nürburgring last year and took the first victory of the new Porsche 911 GT3 R on the Nordschleife at NLS5. The familiar duo of Vincent Kolb and Frank Stippler in the Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO II from Scherer Sport PHX will also take up the challenge on the track in the Green Hell.
A fresh breeze in the AT(-G) class
Smudo & Co from Four Motors Bioconcept-Car will get new competitors in the alternative fuel class. For the first time, Griesemann Gruppe by TR Team has entered an E-Fuels-powered Toyota Supra GT4 in the Nürburgring Endurance Series. Georg Griesemann and Yves Volte take turns at the wheel. After a technical failure at NLS3, roots racing will also return to the race track just in time for the 12h Nürburgring. Tim Schrick and Lucian Gavris will drive a Subaru BRZ RR-AT, which is fuelled with bioethanol. The teams in this class impressively demonstrate that there are also environmentally friendly alternatives to the usual fossil combustion engines in motorsport.
Will a preliminary decision be reached in the championship?
The two driver trio of Adrenalin Motorsport Team Motec – Daniel Zils, Oskar Sandberg and Philipp Leisen in the BMW 330i and Yannick Fübrich, Sven Markert and Nils Steinberg in the BMW M240i Racing Cup – lead the championship after five races with 79 points. Eight points behind are second-placed Heiko Eichenberg, Fabio Grosse and Patrik Grütter, who are competing for SRS Team Sorg Rennsport in a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 CS. At the 12h Nürburgring, a preliminary decision in terms of the championship could already be made, since with the extra points for the two 6h races included and with two drop results in the remaining two races of the season, the lead in the standings could no longer be taken away from them. Who will be crowned champion in the end will be decided by various factors – in the end, perhaps even by the positions in practice.
Secure your tickets now!
Even though the Red Bull Formula Nürburgring, the support event of the 12h Nürburgring, which will run on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. at the Müllenbachschleife, is already sold out – tickets from 25 euros are still available for the NLS season highlight at vln.de/tickets. These include access to grandstands T3 (BMW M Power grandstand), T4 (Bilstein grandstand) and T12a (paddock grandstand) as well as the exclusive spectator areas in the Brünnchen and Pflanzgarten. In addition, they allow access to the paddock, the pit lane and the starting grid. Also included is a one-time free visit to the motorsport experience museum ring°werk.
