The Porsche 911 GT3 of the Team ROWE Motorsport took the chequered flag after a race time of 24 hours, 2 minutes and 39 seconds into an excellent 8th overall position. The crew composed of the four drivers Michael Zehe (Flörsheim-Dalsheim / Germany), Marco Schelp (Berlin / Germany), Alexander Roloff (Berlin / Germany) and Mark Bullitt (Miami / USA) achieved 5th place in class SP9 and were second fastest Porsche team at the end of the traditional race at the Nürburgring Nordschleife.
Position 18 on the starting grid was the key to this success and the team’s race car was hence fitted with the coveted blue light which is attributed to the fastest 20 cars on the grid. With constantly fast lap times and without any technical problems, the Porsche with start number 18 managed to move further up in the field hour by hour and was already shown into 10th position after 8 hours race time. Due to the various technical failures and accidents suffered amongst others by the works team and the works supported teams such as Audi, Porsche and BMW, the four drivers around team manager Peter Mamerow finally moved up into place 8 which could be secured until the chequered flag came out after 150 laps and after they had covered a race distance of 3806,7 kilometres. “Probably nobody had anticipated this or had us on the list”, said the excited and happy Michael Zehe who had completed the last turn.
As anticipated, there was an exciting battle going on in the top of the field amongst the works teams of Porsche, Audi and BMW. Manthey-Racing, the winning team of the last 3 years, went into the lead after a few laps already and then dominated the race. Just like many other works teams or works-supported teams, they had however to retire later in the race. Once again, a constant performance without any mistakes was the key to success at this event. After the retirement of the Hybrid Porsche which had its first appearance at this endurance race, the works BMW M3 GT2 finally crossed the finish line into first place, followed by the Ferrari F 430 of the Hankook Team Farnbacher and the Audi R8 LMS of Phoenix Racing.
The 24h Race turned out to be less successful for the “big brother” of the ROWE Porsche in the same design. Whilst Chris Mamerow was able to go the pace of the race leader at the beginning, he had to stop in the Porsche 911 GT3 R entered by Mamerow Racing after almost 5 hours race time due to technical failure. The second car of the Team ROWE Motorsport, an Audi TT, did not finish the race, either. At about mid-race, the competition was over for drivers Franz Rohr (Gaimersheim / Germany), Uwe Bleck (Koesching / Germany), Andreas Kast (Berlin / Germany) and Michael Zehe (Flörsheim-Dalsheim / Germany) at the beginning of the Döttinger Höhe.
About 220.000 spectators around the 25.378 kilometres long circuit supported the 197 teams which had taken the start and made the 24h Race 2010 a very special and great racing experience again.
