The 9th round of the VLN endurance race series at the Nürburgring “Green Hell” was marked by abominable autumn weather conditions and continuous rainfalls and made the race a balancing act – a special challenge for all the drivers and teams, thus including the 23 cars in the Renault Cup Clio competing in VLN class SP3.
Elmar Jurek and Jannik Olivo, who are already the champions in the New Renault Clio Cup this year, again dominated the race at the Nürburgring. Michael Schrey and Henry Alkenhorst, too, were at their best in this unsettles weather and finished second in the Renault classification behind Axel Linther.
Rain, fog, autumn weather: The conditions with which many competitors were struggling already before the 9th round of the VLN endurance race series represented a special and enjoyable thrill in particular for Elmar Jurek. The conditions seemed to be perfect for the Renaul Clio driver and his TKS team mate Jannik Olivo. The two drivers who live in Berlin had already dominated their class in the timed practice session and achieved a brilliant 35th place overall amongst the 189 starters. But right after the rainy start of the race, Karl Brinker in his completely revised “Brötchen-Clio” started to attack: The driver of the Ring-Racing team very quickly moved ahead of Elmar Jurek and of many other competitors until he had to stop the race in lap eleven due to a technical failure.
“I have no idea from where Karl came all of a sudden, but he was there at once”, said the surprised Jurek. “Otherwise, we managed everything all right”, informed Jurek on their performance. “It’s a pity that the race was stopped before the scheduled finish. A win in class SP 3 – which was our declared target – would otherwise certainly have been in reach”, he said with conviction. They so finished second in their class and 21st overall.
Henry Walkenhorst and Michael Schrey were very happy with their second place in the Renault Clio classification, position six in VLN category SP3 and 50th overall. “There were really extreme conditions here today. This gets your adrenalin flowing”, was the description of Walkenhorst with a critical glance at the clouded sky. All the better was the team’s summary later on: “All in all, everything was running perfectly. We tried one lap on slick tyres but changed back immediately whilst we were able to maintain quite a comfortable advance”, was the summary of the relieved team member Lydia Kurzig.
The optimism of Axel Linther, too, was rewarded: After several retirements during the season, he felt quite confident ahead of the 9th VLN race, and he was right. After numerous fights about positions, he finally finished third in the Renault classification, into position 8 in class SP3 and 58th overall. All together, with regard to the difficult conditions during the race, the Clio drivers got off lightly: Only four of the 23 Clio teams were not classified.
Close to the race end, race control decided to stop the race before the scheduled time had elapsed when a sleet storm came up. As more than 160 minutes of the scheduled race distance had been run, full championship points will be awarded in accordance with the Sporting Regulations.
The final round of this year’s VLN endurance race series will take place on 30th October.
