The team of ROWE RACING again finished in the top 10 with their Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 at the fourth VLN race. The three drivers Hubert Haupt (Munich), Marco Schelp (Berlin) and Dominik Schwager (Munich) succeeded in moving from place 19 on the grid up into final position 9. The sister car with drivers Klaus Rader (Munich), Alexander Roloff (Berlin) and Michael Zehe (Flörsheim-Dalsheim/ Germany) finished the 4h Race into 11th position overall.
With Marko Schelp’s lap time of 8:31.630 minutes in the morning qualifying, the team finished the session in the top 20. After the race start, start driver Hubert Haupt then managed within only a few laps to constantly move up until position 12. In the further running of the race, Dominik Schwager and Marco Schelp then succeeded in gaining 9th place which was at the same time the second best result of all the Mercedes-Benz SLS AGM GT3 which had taken the start.
Team manager Hans-Peter Naundorf: „It was a good and constant team performance again and we are reasonably happy. Once again, we were able to test a few items under racing conditions so that we collected further data for the 24 Hour Race.”
The team in the sister car started a brilliant fight in moving up and gained amazing 27 positions. So ROWE manager Michael Zehe, too, was very happy: “This was for the first time that I had the opportunity to complete many consecutive laps – from lap to lap, I had more and more fun. We have shown a constant and good performance today and had a good pace.”
The overall victory was gained by the Hybrid Porsche of the Team Manthey with drives Marco Holzer, Patrick Long and Richard Lietz, followed by another Manthey Porsche and an Audi R8 of the Team Phoenix.
The VLN series will have its next race on 11th June 2011 which will be the last long distance race before the 24 Hour Race at the Nürburgring.
