Alpina provided a surprise already at the timed practice. At the beginning of the session, the two Alpina went into the lead of the 175 racing cars strong field. In the 15 minutes of the session only, Christian Mamerow set the fastest time in his Porsche, followed by the Manthey-Porsche and two Phoenix Audi R8. With a time of 8 minutes 17 seconds, Stian Sorlie finished only 4 seconds behind the pole position into position six. The eighth lap time achieved by Claudia Hürtgen unfortunately was cancelled as her team mate Michael Ammermüller was driving too fast under yellow flags, just as ten further cars.
Nevertheless, Claudia Hürtgen was fighting her way up from the end of the first starting group into the top ten during her stint and changed the steering wheel to Valentin Hummerl after almost one hour driving time. Valentin was in the slipstream of the Zakspeed Viper. A slower car which they were about to overtake then cleared the racing line for the Viper but not for the BMW Alpina B6 GT3, which resulted in a collision. Valentin made it back to the pits with a broken suspension but the damage was so bad that it could not be repaired in time, out for start number 75.
After the start of the race, Stian Sorlie was able to improve in the other BMW Alpina B6 GT3 with start number 78 by one place into position five but lost it again due to the decreasing performance of the tyres. Csaba Walter continued in lap seven and he then changed to Andreas Wirth in 14th lap after a perfect turn. Stian Sorlie was pushing very hard in the final turn and secured the fifth place in class GT3 and the ninth place overall for Alpina after four hours race distance. “We are really happy with a place amongst the top ten. We have not been racing at the Nordschleife since the 24h Race in May and considering this, we have been quite competitive. To finish in a better position would require a further development of the suspension set-up and an engine which is better adapted for endurances races to reduce fuel consumption”, explained Andreas Bovensiepen.
