At the highlight of the VLN endurance racing championship season, the 6 Hour ADAC Ruhr Pokal Rennen, the touring car racing team of Fleper Motorsport which is based in Oedinger/ Germany was now able to carry on its series of success in the year 2011. The team of the bilious-green flagship VW Scirocco R, Marcel Hoppe (Lennestadt/ Germany) and Harald Thönnes (Mülheim-Kärlich/ Germany), was this time completed by the British former regular driver in the team Peter Venn (Durham) in its impressive series of success in the standard production touring car class with turbo engines.
In the rainy qualifying on Saturday morning, the trio already clearly dominated their Opel Astra competitors and again achieved pole position in class VT2. The two team mates Herbert von Danwitz (Tönisvorst/ Germany) and Dr. Joachim Steidel (Recklinghausen/ Germany) in the black Renault Clio RS II took it a little easier at the beginning. They took the start in the class of the French cup race cars, the strongest class in the field, from 22nd place.
The start of the race at noon had to be taken with rain tyres but the track became quickly dry as from the third lap. The track conditions at several sections on the 24 kilometres long combination of the Nordschleife and the Grand Prix Circuit resulted in the decision taken by the Fleper Team as well as by many other teams to change to slick tyres in good time in order to save the rain tyres. The fast pit crew so first of all changed the tyres on the Scirocco driven by Marcel Hoppe and, one lap later, on the Clio driven by Herbert von Danwitz. A little later, these first unscheduled stops turned out to be wrong decisions as the rain showers came back. The superior Scirocco team dropped temporarily back into third place but gained back the lead without any problems in the second regular stint.
Apart from this, the seventh VLN round was running according to schedule for the two Fleper crews. When the race was stopped after 5:41 hours and before the scheduled distances had been completed due to a torrential rain, von Danwitz/ Steidel took the chequered flag into a good 15 midfield position and Hoppe/ Thönnes/ Venn crossed the finish line for the sixth time in the 2011 season as class winner. “We can be really happy with this result and also considering that our cars have hardly any damage despite the difficult weather conditions”, confirmed the Jan Fleper, Technical Director, in the evening and he did not miss the opportunity to express his compliments to the whole team for their brilliant performance. “The cooperation between the pit crew and the drivers was absolutely professional, there is a great harmony in the team”. The team of Fleper Motorsport is now very relaxed in view of the three remaining championship rounds to take place on 24th September as well as on 15th and 29th October.
