The club owned BMW M3 of the Bergischer Motorsport Club should make its VLN debut at the 34th RCM DMV Grenzlandrennen, the sixth round of the endurance racing championship Nürburgring. After a few tests in the RCN with various driver teams, the moment had finally arrived on 30th July. With Manuel Paßberger (Haan/ Germany), Erik Heim (Bergisch Gladbach/ Germany) and Rolf Kuni from Switzerland, the BMC had entered an experienced crivers’ crew.
As the Nordschleife was still quite wet in the early morning, the BMC drivers started practice with rain tyres and had agreed not to push too hard – none of the drivers wanted to take any risks to spoil the debut of the race car which had been prepared with such a lot of enthusiasm. With a surprising lap time of 11:07.995 minutes, Manuel Paßberger nevertheless succeeded in gaining sixth grid position in the very strong class V5. The gap of the BMC car with start number 418 compared to the class winner was only just below 10 seconds.
The passionate club team was accordingly motivated at the start of the race. After the brilliant performance in the morning, Manuel Paßberger was also nominated to start the race. He confirmed the confidence place in him by team manager Renato Milicki with a very consistent performance. He succeeded to improve his lap time to 9:50.058 minutes despite many close fights. “He could even have gone faster“, realized Milicki after the analysis of the data logger. “In adding his best sector times, Manuel would theoretically have been able to set a time of 9:42.” After a successful stint and into fifth position, he changed the BMC-M3 to his team mate Rolf Kuni who himself was not that lucky. His fight to move up was all of a sudden stopped in his second lap already when the red flag came out. After a heavy race accident in the high-speed section “Tiergarten” in which three cars were involved, Race Control had decided to stop the race for safety reasons.
Rolf Kuni took the restart again at about 15:00hrs. “The handling of the BMW is very good. I try to carefully approach to my limits but without taking any risks.” The rear wheel drive in the BMW was a totally new experience for the race driver from Switzerland who was used to drive a Honda Civic with a totally different handling. The lap times nevertheless demonstrated that he perfectly succeeded in managing the unusual handling. Kuni, too, finished his turn without any major problem. After refuelling the car, it was not Erik Heim’s turn who rejoined the race with the M3. He was however not able to complete a long distance as the red flag came out again after a heavy collision behind the corner at “Bergwerk” and spoiled the strategy of the BMC team. Two of the five cars involved in the accident had rolled and blocked the track. Again, Race Control had no other choice than to stop the race – this time finally.
Team manager Renato Milicki had mixed feeling when he gave his summary of the race: “Our drivers did not cause any damage to the car. We were however amongst the ones who lost positions due to the red flags”. Both times when the red flag came out, the BMC-BMW had just completed a scheduled pit stop and thus lost the positions which they had previously gained in the fights on the track. Under these considerations, they had finally to be quite happy still with class position 11. It is understandable that Erik Heim was disappointed as his stint had hence become very short. He will be part of the modified team again at the 6h Race on 27 August and hopes that he will be able to complete more laps then.
