Second victory in the BFGoodrich Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring season for the VLN Honda Junior-Team – Dennis Nägele, Kristian Nägele and Tim Scheerbarth thus take over second position in the tv14 Honda Civic Cup before the last championship round and reduce the gap to the leaders onto one point only.
The competitors are supposed to get nervous by now. With their class win at the 33rd DMV 250-Meilen-Rennen the young race drivers moved ahead between the two favourite teams and may even gain the title in the final race by their own efforts.
Start driver Dennis Nägele – he had achieved pole position in the Honda Civic Type-R in the timed practice – lost one place in the traffic of the first turn on the wet track but managed to keep within reach of the class leaders. He took the right decision when he came to the pits after the second lap already to change to BFGoodrich slick tyres. “This was the basis for our success today”, informs Christian Kuhnke, Technical Director of the team FH Köln Motorsport. “Our direct rivals remained out on the track on rain tyres until lap five.” After this early pit stop, Nägele was pushing very hard as the time lost due to the strategy with the additional stop had to be made up. Second stop, Tim Scheerbarth continued. The youngest of the juniors had some hard nuts to crack with his competitors but he managed to go into the lead and to increase the lead before he changed the steering wheel to Kristian Nägele. Incredible fast lap times for Nägele were shown on the timing monitors at the command stands and he was not even slowed down by some showers of rain. They proceeded to the last pit stop then shortly before the race end which the crew of the team FH Köln Motorsport again managed very quickly as usual – and they did it! The VLN Honda Junior-Team remained in the lead and finally finished into first class position for the second time of the season.
“The conditions today were anything else but easy”, said Kristian Nägele. “We had a good race strategy and we were simply the fastest on the track. I think nobody had really counted on us but now, we are here and we want the Championship!”
“Crazy! Our drivers have done an excellent job under these changing conditions. That was racing on highest level. I have always said that we have the potential – we are now going to take the title!” was the clear warning of Jan Derenbach in relation to their competitors. And with a gap of only one point behind the leaders, the juniors have all the chances to gain the championship – their performance especially during the second half of the season anyhow speaks for them.
The team of the Cologne University of Applied Science this time got a big support from their own ranks. The complete group of first-year students of automotive engineering at the Cologne University had travelled to the Nürburgring upon invitation of the endurance racing organiser VLN and they all were very impressed both by the racing series and by the team.
