The new team of ROWE RACING finished the third VLN race with a class win in their Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3. The driver trio made up of Hubert Haupt, Klaus Rader (both from Munich) and Marco Schelp (Berlin) succeeded in moving up from position 14 on the grid into final overall position four and they also won their class SP9 ahead of 14 other competitors. Their sister car driven by Alexander Roloff (Berlin), Thomas Jäger (Munich) and Roland Rehfeld (Blankenfelde/ Germany) finished the eventful 6h race within eyeshot of the finish line but without being classified..
For ROWE RACING, the team of the lubricant manufacturer based at Bubenheim/ Germany, the race day started with a bang. With 8:14.961 minutes, Thomas Jäger set a fastest lap time in the SLS AMG GT3 in the morning qualifying session, a time which was not only a hard nut to crack but turned out to be unbeatable for the other competitors. Pole position for the trio of Roloff, Jäger, Rehfeld! After the start of the 6h race, the ROWE gullwing race car with start number 15 was first of all able to defend the lead successfully. After almost two hours race time amongst the top teams, the car then got a time penalty for a non-respect of yellow flags. Nine other cars in the top group were affected by the same penalty so that Thomas Jäger and the others had to start a hard attack to move up, just when it started to rain. He made it up until seventh place but the car stopped just before the finish line as it ran out of fuel so that it was finally not classified.
The second ROWE RACING SLS was more lucky as the team benefited from the penalty inflicted onto the top ten and consequently moved up in the classification. During the race, the crew with drivers Haupt, Rader and Schelp was always found between first and fourth place, depending on the current pit stops. The final driver Haupt finally took the chequered flag into fourth position overall and as class winner in SP9. Furthermore they finished as fastest of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3. The overall victory was gained by the Ferrari of the Farnbach team with drivers Marco Seefried and Jamie Melo Jr.
Team manager Hans-Peter Naundorf: “After the fantastic qualifying and the first pole for ROWE RACING, we are more than happy with the performance of our two cars and about the win in class SP9.”
The next round of the VLN series will take place on 28 May 2011.
