Both practice and race at the 7th round of the endurance racing championship Nürburgring (VLN) were marked by chaotic weather conditions and heavy rain falls. Rank Motorsport kept cool in the race which was scheduled to run over six hours and in which the team was supported by the former world cyclo-cross champion as amateur Klaus-Peter Thaler.
Stefan Rank (Waldbröl-Wilkenroth/ Germany), regular driver in the team and literally most experienced driver in the team of Rank Motorsport started the qualifying for the 7th VLN race. Rank completed three laps at the Grand Prix Circuit in heavy rain to warm up the tyres. He then proceeded to just one lap over the a little more than 25 kilometres long Nordschleife in order to minimize the risk of having an accident on the partly overflooded track. Team manager Rudi Rank then sent junior Joel Lehnen (Finnentrop/ Germany) out on the circuit who lost control of the Opel Corsa in aquaplaning at the Nordschleife, spun and went off into the grass without hitting anything. Lehnen rejoined the session, completed another lap in order to get better used to the car and to the weather conditions. Klaus-Peter Thaler (Gevelsberg/ Germany) was the last driver to compete in practice in the Opel Corsa. In his fast lap the former professional cyclist and winner of the endurance racing championship 2011 made use of his long-time motorsport experience and finished into third place in class V2 with a lap time of 11:57 minutes.
The race was decided by the tyre choice
Like in all the previous race, Stefan Rank was the start driver. He started the race which was declared “wet race” on rain tyres which was mandatory under the prevailing wet track conditions. After only three laps, the track had become so dry that Rank decided to change to slick tyres. The decision turned out to be perfectly right. Rank was able to set much faster times than the second placed and moved ahead. In his eleventh lap, Rank realized that the next torrential rainfalls were about to come, took the spontaneous decision to return to the pits for refuelling and for changing back to rain tyres before he handed over the steering wheel of the Opel Corsa to Klaus-Peter Thaler. The cyclist expert who had participated in the 24h cycle race at the Nürburgrung only one week before right away felt well in the small Corsa and happily completed lap by lap. He was able to constantly increase their lead to the pursuers but he himself was not able to close the gap to the class leader so that he could apply enough pressure. He completed constant lap times before his team manager signalled him to come to the pits in lap 21 to change to Joel Lehnen who was supposed to finish the race. The team refilled the Corsa to the limit and fitted new slick tyres. To the great satisfaction of his team manager the junior in the team, too, completed a perfect stint even though the prevailing conditions were extremely difficult as there were still many extremely wet passages on the track and on top of that it started to rain again heavily just before the official race end. Race Control decided to stop the race before the scheduled 6 hour distance and thus avoided further damages for the 143 cars which were still in the race out of the 200 starters. Rank Motorsport finished this 7th VLN round into second place. With this fantastic result, Stefan Rank and Joel Lehnen are now amongst the top hundred in the championship.
“The Corsa has a perfect set-up, it is easy to handle and even though it is so small, racing with it is great fun”, said Klaus-Peter Tahler. “I did not push too hard as I was a guest driver only and didn’t want to damage anything. This did however not at all spoil my driving pleasure. I noted the many section with new tarmac – which I did not realize that much last week during the cycle race. A great thank you to the whole team for a wonderful weekend which makes you want to go for more.”
