On the grid of the 38th edition of ADAC Zurich 24h Rae, the first two rows are in possession of the Audi camp. In the eventful qualifying session, four Audis R 8 LMS proved to be faster than anybody else. The R8 of Mattias Ekström, Oliver Jarvis, Timo Scheider and Marco Werner was the quickest and secured the pole with a time of 8:24.753 minutes, just fractions ahead of the fastest Phoenix Team Audi: at the end of the day, Mark Basseng, Mike Rockenfeller, Frank Stippler and motor-racing legend Hans-Joachim Stuck were just 0.815 seconds lower than the pole-sitters.
The situation in the second row was virtually the same: again, an Abt Audi (#2, Abt / Collard / Luhr / Mies) finished ahead of a Phoenix sister car (#99, Biela / Fässler / Kaffer / Hennerici). The best car behind the four Audis was the Haribo-Porsche GT3-R of the Manthey Team (#8, Arnold / Menzel / Westbrook / Margaritis) in fifth position. On Saturday afternoon at 15:00hrs, the cars will rocket away from the grid for the first lap. And all those who haven’t got the opportunity to witness the 24h race live on site will be perfectly informed via the official event website (www.24h-rennen.de) or the live coverage of TV partner Sport1.
In the final 30 minutes of the qualifying session at the 25-kilomtre circuit, the battle for the grid positions entered its crucial phase: again and again, the provisional best time was improved. Up to this point in time, last year’ winners, the Manthey Racing squad, had held the provisional pole for nearly 90 minutes: with their Porsche GT3-R entered by the squad based in Meuspath, Marc Lieb, Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Marcel Tiemann had set their fastest lap time right at the beginning of the session. In the following 30 minutes, however, numerous competitors struck back and consequently, the Porsche dropped back to seventh position. While Marco Werner secured the pole in the closing seconds of the session with a truly amazing lap time. “I have raced lot of cars at the Nordschleife,” revealed Werner, “From a small Group N car to the Audi R8 LMS. Therefore, I know the circuit really well. This and my passion for this track have been the crucial factors on the way to this success. Team Abt provided me with a great car and on my fastest lap, everything was just perfect. I went out at a perfect point in time, hadn’t to cope with a lot of traffic, could take the car to its very limit and gave my very best.”
