It was an exciting race for the Sartorius Team Black Falcon, and it was successful at the same time. After an eventful round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft 2009, the 40th Adenauer ADAC-Rundstrecken Trophy, the team of Frank Bierther, Daniel Schwerfeld and Bona Ventura finished the race on the podium and enjoyed spraying the well-deserved champagne.
The weather was simply beautiful in the Eifel region at this fourth round of the Nürburgring endurance racing championship. Whilst the Black Falcon race cars finished the timed practice in rather good positions, the team which is based in Kelberg was faced with a special challenge in the race.
The race had to be suspended due to the recovery of a vehicle involved in an accident which completely spoiled the team’s race strategy. Black Falcon which had entered seven cars reacted very quickly to the modified conditions, though, and did this in a very successful way.
It was in particular the BMW E92 M3 V8 driven by Dillon Koster, Alex Böhm and Christer Jöns which showed an impressive improvement compared to the last round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft. Additionally backed by the experience made at the recent 24h Race, the strongest BMW of the Falken team showed a clear step forwards towards the leading group. Jöns, Koster and Böhm did a really great job in gaining not less than 13 positions and finished 17th overall at the end of the race which was reduced to 3 hours and 20 minutes. With his personal fastest lap time of 8:52 minutes, Christer Jöns hereby made it clear that the development during the past weeks had gone into the right direction.
Christer Jöns as well as Alex Böhm, however, were not able to relax after this god performance. They had to make the pace over the Nürburgring with another top prepared race car, the BMW E90 in class V4. Together with Sean-Paul Breslin, they succeeded again in scoring a victory in the class of series production cars. With this excellent result, the champion car around Alex Böhm was able to reduce the gap to the championship leaders.
Bona Ventura had imposed a double start upon him, too, and drove the BMW Z4 in class SP5 together with Ron Swart. With their excellent performance, the driver duo finished on the podium again, and thus repeated their result at the 24h Race.
With the pleasant memories of the success at the second round of the endurance racing championship, Ventura, supported by the strong Daniel Schwerfeld and by Frank Bierther, again gained a victory in the group of series production cars. With constant fast lap times, the team in the V6 consistently extended their lead from the race start and with a time of 9:28 minutes, Schwerfeld demonstrated the speed which can be realised with a race car prepared as a close-to-production car.
A very successful weekend thus ended for the Sartorius Team Black Falcon. The total of seven cars had been entered and all of them took the chequered flag at this fourth round of the season which is the result of a very strong team effort. The whole team is now very much looking forward to the next race in the “Green Hell’”.
