The first VLN round was marked by disappointment as well as by joy for the roadrunner racing team. Despite unfortunate starting conditions – start from the last row on the grid, unscheduled pit stops and a retirement – the team was able to celebrate some fantastic 3rd and 11th places in the class of Clio race cars. The mood in the team of the three crews was already down in timed practice. First of all they suffered technical failures, then the wet track and many accidents turned out to spoil all hopes for a good start position.
The qualifying was finished at the end of the first lap already for Roadrunner driver ‘Rennsemmel’. After a lack of performance was already noted in the black Clio with start number 676 during the set-up session on the previous day without finding the reason, a leaking radiator was now the problem. After repair, team mate Jürgen Peter started the race from the pit lane as last driver in the second starting group and moved ahead of 15 Cup3 competitors in the very first lap already.
A close overtaking manoeuvre of a BMW in lap ten at the section of Kallenhardt then resulted in a collision with a damaged bumper and an off into the guardrails could just be avoided by the roadrunner driver. After another 2 laps, Jürgen Peter meanwhile holing 7th place in the Cup 3 class changed the steering wheel despite a preventive pit stop to check the cooling system as scheduled to his team mate at mid race. ‘Rennsemmel’ continued to move up despite the missing power and a resulting lack of 10 km/h in the top speed compared to the other Clio competitors and finished with an impressive result: Position 3 on the podium of the Cup3 class. As last year, the experienced team convinced with constant lap times, endurance and perseverance.
The second roadrunner team, the Nordschleife experienced Volker Kühn and Scott Marshall, the racing excited newcomer in the team, also turned out to be a powerful crew. Scott Marshall from Great Britain who had so far completed only 25 laps as a ‚tourist’ at the Nordschleife started his first race in the ‘Green Hell’ from a position in the rear field of the second group. Following the strategy ‘Endurance will help in achieving your goal’, the race driver gained metre by meter on the track which was still not at all familiar to him. After having lost 13 positions due to misfirings and a pit stop, the roadrunner driver onto position 8 changed mid race to his team mate. Volker Kühn, too, set fastest lap times from the very beginning of his stint and, after having dropped back again, moved then up into the front group of the field. He took the chequered flag into 11th place of the Cup3 class. The team had gained 55 places in the overall classification – a result which was not bad at all.
The motor sport event at the Nürburgring finished disappointing in contrast for the racing team of Maik Pitsinis and Fabian Müller. After an eighth position in qualifying, things unfortunately turned quickly to the bad for the young team. The engine failed in the third lap already and the race was over for motor sport fan and start driver Pitsinis after only 21 minutes.
The racing enthusiast who spends every free minute in completing laps at the Nordschleife when it is open for the public thus suffered a bad setback. The ambitious 18 years old high-school graduate Fabian Müller showed frustration, anger and disappointment. The youngster with the ambition to set constant lap times below 10 minutes had been looking forward excitedly to his first participation in the ‘Green Hell’ and will now have to wait until the 2md VLN race on the last weekend of April. A third podium position and an 11th place in the Cup 3 class, a good start in to the season for the Roadrunner Racing Team despite some defeats.
