After an exciting final at the 34th DMV 4 Hour Race, Lance David Arnold (Duisburg) and Christian Mamerow (Castrop-Rauxel) celebrated the first overall victory with a race car of the new GT3 class. Starting from pole position, the duo led the four hours race time from start to finish to win the race in their Porsche 911 GT3. A reason to jubilate had also Marc Basseng (Leutenbach), Frank Stippler (Bad Münstereifel) and Christian Abt (Kempten) in the new Audi R8 LMS of the Phoenix-Racing team which joined the winner on the podium into second place. The podium was completed by the winners of the opening race Marcel Tiemann (Monaco) and Romain Dumas (Switzerland) in a Porsche 911 GT3 RSR prepared by Manthey-Racing. It was under difficult weather conditions that on Saturday morning 191 teams started the practice to this second championship round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring and 182 cars were at the start of the race.
“Simply perfect”, Arnold gladly commented his first victory in the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring, “I am so glad to be on top of the podium after such a difficult race.” Two laps before the finish the two Porsche teams with Mamerow and Manthey came to the pits for a short refuelling stop. Whilst Arnold continued on his slightly weakening rain tyres, Tiemann played safe and changed tyres. The adopted Monegasque thus lost second place which he had been able to secure after a head-to-head fight with Stippler in the Audi. “That was really close towards the end”, admitted Arnold. “I was in permanent radio contact with my team so that I was able to use some clever tactics.” Abt who was involved in the development of the Audi R8 LMS from the very beginning was quite happy with his first appearance on the podium in the second championship race at the Nordschleife. “A great success which we had not really anticipated, to be honest. The fact that with Marc and Frank we had two absolute experts of the Nordschleife in our car was very important today. In addition, we have now been able to collect important data under wet track conditions.” The Manthey duo had to start the race from the last row on the grid of the first starting group as they had encountered some drive train problems in their Porsche during the timed practice. “It was a pity that we had to start last of the first starting group”, said Tiemann. “We then also lost time on the wet track. We could make up time when it got dryer and started to be quite quick.” The gap finally between the top three at the finish was 38.926 seconds.
The team of John Barker (Great Britain), Peter Terting (Kempten) und Vanina Ickx (United States) in the new natural gas powered Volkswagen Scirocco which had its first appearance at the 34th DMV 4 Hour Race had a safe class victory in view when they had to stop the race after eleven laps due to a damage in the electronic unit. The conventionally driven sister car with World Rally Champion Carlos Sainz (Spain), Florian Gruber (Aham) and Martin Karlhofer (Austria) finished the timed practice into 19th place but Gruber retired in the first race lap with a damaged drive shaft.
Professional cyclist Jan Ullrich (Switzerland), together with team mates Henning Meyersrenken and Thomas Haider (both from Cologne), scored his first class victory at his second race participation this weekend in the 34th DMV 4 Hour Race. “I feel more and more comfortable at the Nordschleife”, said Ullrich. “My only problem today was the tyres which cooled down every time I had to slow down due to accidents or oil on the track.”
The decision about the day victory in the Honda Civic Cup class was taken on the very last metres only. Jürgen Nett (Mayen) moved ahead of the Civic of Frank Totz (Brakel) and Peter Kreier (Cologne) at the Döttinger Höhe and together with his team mate Chirstoph Dupré (Schiffweiler) celebrated his second class victory in a row. The Cup classification of the New Renault Clio Cup finally showed the second-placed of the opening round, Jannik Olivio and Elmar Jurek (both from Berlin), in the front. The victory in the Seat Leo Cup class was gained by Denis and Marc Busch (both from Hemsbach).
Whilst Alexander Böhm (Kelberg), Sean Paul Breslin (Great Britain) and Christer Jöns (Ingelheim) had the same score as Wirtz / Weiland / Borkowsky after the first race of the season and thus shared first championship position, the Black-Falcon trio now went into the championship lead after their second victory in the class of VLN production cars up to 2.500 cc cylinder capacity. The gap ahead of Marcel Tiemann who celebrated his second class victory in the VLN Specials up to 4.000 cc cylinder capacity is 0.26 points.
Ludger Henrich (Schmitten) celebrated his 50th class victory in the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring this weekend. Together with Jürgen Schulten (Hamminkeln), he won the class of the VLN production cars up to 2.000 cc cylinder capacity in the Opel Astra OPC.
