At the fourth round of the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring, there was once again an exciting battle about positions going on amongst the participants in the Renault Sport Speed Trophy. The competition was finally decided in favour of Jannik Olivo and Elmar Jurek from Berlin, Germany, who finished the race with a third consecutive victory of the season in class Cup 3.
“We were fighting in the traffic of the leading group almost until the race end and there were many changes in the lead and overtaking manoeuvres. That was great fun again”, said Jannik Olivo with happiness written all over his face. Olivo had been the start driver and handed over the steering wheel of the Renault Clio to his team mate Elmar Jurek at the pit stop into second position whereupon Jurek moved up into first place in the class Cup3 and made their success perfect. “There were really exciting fights in between, in the last three to four laps then, the point was to bring the car safety to the finish”, was the summary of a relieved Jurek and he added: “Today, everything was running as we had anticipated. For us, this was our third start in the current season and the third victory at the same time. Simply perfect.”
With a gap of about one minute behind, Dominik Brinkmann and Stefan Epp took the chequered flag into second place of the Renault Sport Speed Trophy. After the two drivers had finished the qualifying into the lead, their aim was to also win the race. Dominik Brinkmann, however, dropped back due to problems already at the start. Even though the race driver from Dortmund/ Germany in between managed to move back into the lead, he and his team mate Stefan Epp finally had to be satisfied with second place: “The second place is not the result we had expected and we could perhaps have done better today. Anyhow, we have collected important championship points again and so we are reasonably happy.”
In an early stage of the race, father and son Axel and Sebastian Linther were already in the lead and thus belonged to the favourites for a race win. In the tenth lap of the race, Axel Linther was then involved in a collision with a faster car. Linther spun in his Renault Clio at the section Hatzenbach and lost important seconds. In the further running of the race, his son Sebastian closed the gap to the leading group again but then encountered a clutch problem. “I then slowed down a little in the last laps in order to finish the race safely and tried to avoid an even bigger damage,” explained Sebastian Linther. “We could still score championship points for our third place and, as everybody knows, the final score will not be drawn up until the end of the season”, added Linther.
With 60 points, Jurek and Olivo are now shown in the championship lead, followed by Brinkann and Epp with 48 points. The classification remains provisional as the results of the third round have not yet been completely declared final and are hence not yet considered. The next and fifth round of the VLN series will take place in only two weeks time on 11th June.
