Last year’s GT3 class champions are back in victory lane. European truck champion Norbi Kiss and Felix Quirmbach took victory in the second race of the Digital Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 from BS+COMPETITION. In the Goodridge 3h race, the duo from the Munich-based team pulled out a lead of 21.703 seconds over the second-placed BMW M4 GT3 from Veloce Thrustmaster. Guest starters ‘Flying Finn Academy’ driver Tatu Siipola and Daniel Lafuente thus made a very good debut in the DNLS. The podium was completed by Phil Denes and Rainer Talvar in the BMW M4 GT3 of the MAHLE RACING TEAM.
Starting from pole position, Mahle starter driver Denes initially defended first place. On the second lap, however, he received a ‘stop and go’ penalty for exceeding the maximum speed of 90 km/h on the formation lap. Sami Matti Trogen, who was again very fast in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the Mercedes-AMG Esports Team Williams, also suffered a similar fate. Because he had blocked another car in qualifying, the Finn also had to drive through the pit lane once. In the end, he and Vasilios Beletsiotis only managed a thankless fourth place. After 24 laps, the AMG Team Apex Racing’s season opener winners finished fifth ahead of the fastest Ford Mustang GT3, driven by Jan Philipp Springob and Jonas Gundert for M&J Downforce.
‘It was a great race for us. We had good pace, but of course also some luck, as other cars around us were penalised. That gave us a small advantage in the first stint,’ said Kiss. ‘Then Felix took over, an incredible driver. He was so fast that nobody could match his pace. We just had to drive a clean race to take the win. I’m super happy with the win and thank the team and our BS+COMPETITION team-mates for the great preparation.’
In the Porsche Esports Endurance Trophy Nürburgring, Raphael Rennhofer and Luca Alpert in the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup from SCHERER eSPORT celebrated their second consecutive win of the season. Second place went to Adrian Gericke and Gunonso Tasdelen from Frozenspeed by GnG. The sister car of the winners – Julian Reimer and Bruno Heinrich – took third place. ‘Watching Raphael in the first stint was extremely exciting. The field is very tight and with the strong slipstream, there are hardly any opportunities to pull away,’ said Alpert, who crossed the finish line with a lead of 4.099 seconds. ‘With two victories, we are now naturally looking towards the championship. Even though we don’t want to leave anything to chance, we’ve now earned a little break after all the work we’ve done in the last few days before preparations for DNLS3 begin.’
Three brands in the top three positions in the GT4 SP10 class – the Goodridge 3h race was once again characterised by excitement. Lucas U. Müller and Benedikt Hitz took the first win of the season for the Falken Simracing Team in the BMW M4 GT4. The duo finished 12.130 seconds ahead of Corentin Guinez and Marvin Strehl in the Mercedes-AMG GT4 from SimRC. The podium was completed by Gabriel C. Streitmatter and Sven Haase, who took turns at the wheel of the Aston Martin Vantage GT4 from Grid-and-Go.com eSports. ‘It was really close at times in the penultimate stint, but in the end I had Marvin well under control,’ said Müller. Things got particularly exciting for Hitz at the start of the second stint: ‘I came out right between the GT3 cars and the Clios. I had to be a bit careful there. But we kept control of the race and had the best strategy in the end.’
Similar to the PEETN, SCHERER eSPORT also achieved its second consecutive victory in the SP3 class. Sven Winter and Michael Teusch won ahead of Leon Harhoff and Lean Weigel from Smillaesport x Entropy. Leon Pischke and Yabbis Aulbert from ‘Adopt, don’t shop’ came third. ‘Even though it may have looked easy, the race was more difficult for us than last time,’ said Teusch. ‘We briefly lost the lead at the start when a GT4 spun in front of us. But we were able to fight our way back to P1. After that, we managed to pull out a small lead and knew that it would be difficult for our rivals to catch up again as long as we remained error-free. We managed to do that.’
The Digital Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie continues in just two weeks’ time. The second RAVENOL 3h race is scheduled for 15 February.
