Chris Mamerow (Castrop-Rauxel) and Dirk Werner (Kissenbrück) could celebrate their second successive victory for the team of Mamerow-Racing at the ninth round of the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring. At the race finish, the winning crew had an advance of 48.230 seconds ahead of Dirk Müller (Switzerland) and Andy Priaulx (Great Britain) who also scored an excellent result at the second participation of the BMW M3 GT2 on the demanding Nordschleife, finishing on the podium. The fight about third position was finally won by Jürgen Alzen (Kausen), Dominik Schwager (Erdweg) and Christian Menzel (Kelberg) in their Porsche 911 GT3 in a photo finish with Hans-Joachim Stuck (Austria), Frank Biela (Monaco) and Frank Stippler (Bad Münstereifel) in the Audi R8 LMS entered by Phoenix-Racing. The Audi team finished some tiny 0.038 seconds behind, which was hardly visible to the naked eye. A preliminary decision in the championship was taken at the 33rd 250-Meilen-Rennen organised by the AC Monheim. The Black-Falcon-Team with drivers Alex Böhm (Kelberg), Sean Paul Breslin (Great Britain) and Christer Jöns (Ingelheim) is now leading in the drivers’ championship with an uncatchable advance of 0.4 points and will receive the champion’s award at the final of the season on 31st of October.
Dirk Adorf (Hennef) who started from pole position in the Ford GT first went into the race lead. Unfortunately, again luck was not on the side of the team of Raeder-Automotive. The last race participation of team mate Hermann Tilke when he was in the leading group finished with a gearbox failure in lap 13. The architect from Aachen who is responsible for the design of many of the modern race circuits all over the world announced that he does not wish to continue racing in top cars.
Under adverse weather conditions, the lead in mid-race changed eight times in total, before from lap 15 Mamerow and Werner established themselves in the lead. “Today, we took the right decisions every time when we changed from slicks to rain tyres”, said Mamerow. “That was our key to success today. Although the track was partly very slippery, our lap times had always been competitive. When we had gained an advance of about one minute, we realized that another victory would be within reach.” After the race, Dirk Müller above all gave a big compliment to the track marshals: “We would not have been able to score this success without the track marshals out there around the circuit. Each lap today at the Nordschleife was different and the signalling of wet sections was more then helpful for us drivers. I therefore wish to say a big thank you.” The big duel of the event took place in the final part of the race in the fight about third position. Alzen and Stippler crossed the finish line after lap 25 at exactly the same time. The latter decided to change to intermediates as rain set in. “That was a wrong decision”, informed Stippler. “Although I was able to catch up to Alzen we finally lost by a split of a second.” The second position on the podium of the season was a great success for driver and team manager Jürgen Alzen. “We just made it finally, with some luck”, he admitted. “We had a slow puncture in the last lap so that I was not able to go at full speed on the long straight of the Döttinger Höhe.”
With Sabine Schmitz and Klaus Abbelen (both from Bahrweiler), Armin Hahne (Monaco), Jochen Krumbach (Eschweiler) and Marco Holzer (Bobingen) as well as Uwe Alzen (Betzdorf) and Lance David Arnold (Duisburg), three Porsche teams finished into positions five to seven behind the four winning crews. The top ten were completed by Andreas and Ralf Schall (both from Dornstadt) in an Opel Astra V8 Coupé, Matthias Weiland (Hainburg) and Andzej Dzikevic (Lithuania) in a Cup-Porsche as well as Altfried Heger (Essen), Sascha Bert (Ober-Ramstadt) and Marc Anton Bronzel (Großensee) in the Dodge Viper of the team Zakspeed-Racing.
Black Falcon now uncatchable in the lead of the championship
With its eighth class win (currently seven out of nine races are considered) in the class of VLN series cars up to 2.500 cc cylinder capacity, the Black-Falcon-Team from Kelberg increased its lead in the championship classification. Even though Rolf Derscheid (Much) and Michael Flehmer (Overath) on their part scored their seventh class victory in the class of VLN series cars up to 1.850 cc cylinder capacity, the gap has not increased to 0.4 points and cannot be made up at the final of the season on 31st of October. Böhm who will receive the award for the champions in two weeks time together with Breslin and Jöns is the first driver since Dirk Adorf in the years 1996 and 1997 who was able to defend his title in this most popular endurance racing championship of Europe.
On 31st of October, the 34th DMV Münsterlandpokal will take place as the final round of the 2009 BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring. This tenth race will cover the distance of four hours before the engines will be stopped in the ‘green hell’ until next spring.
