The first race of the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft turned out to become an emotional roller coaster ride for the team Ring Racing which is based in Boxberg/Germany.
Already before the race weekend began the Team Ring Racing had to realize how little important motor sport actually can be when they were informed that the daughter of Jean-Jacques Meyer had passed away. The thoughts of the whole team are with Jean-Jacques and his family.
It was accordingly difficult for all the team members to return to daily business at the Nürburgring. All the cars of Ring Racing were carrying a mourning band both in practice and in the race.
First of all Andreas Gülden in the BMW Z4 entered in class V5 of series production cars demonstrated that the intensive and detailed work carried out during the last weeks on the suspension unit had paid out. The Nürburgring chief instructor started the race in the Rent Racecar-Z4 from second grid position and was able to move into the class lead already shortly after the start. After a yellow flag section due to an accident then, Gülden fell back into second place and was now following in the slipstream of the BMW E36 driven by Werner Gusenbauer. This close battle, though, found a sudden end with an accident at the section Schwedenkreuz / Aremberg. So one of the cars of Ring Racing had to stop the race early and Theo Kleen together with Andreas Gülden were condemned to spectate from here.
In addition to the BMW Z4, Ring Racing had entered three New Renault Clios for this first race of the VLN season. First of all, the “roll Clio” of Karl Brinker, well-known all around the Nürburgring, went into the lead of the Clios after an excellent practice result. The solo driver quickly pulled away from his make colleagues and demonstrated again how fast he is in his Renault.
Brinker’s lead, too, was unfortunately neither crowned with success because he had to stop the race after only one hour due to technical failure.
The Renault drivers Elöd Szarka and Uwe Kleen as well as the Swiss Clio team Pierre Moret and Claude-Alain Besse were more successful. They finished into tenth and eleventh positions respectively in the very strong class SP3 and into seventh and eights places respectively in the group of the Renault Clio race cars.
