At the eighth round of the VLN season 2011, ROWE RACING again convinced with a brilliant performance in European most popular club racing series. After its position in the top three (class SP9) at the last race, the team from Bubenheim/ Germany again scored a top result at today’s 4h ADAC Barbarossapreis race. The Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 driven by Michael Zehe (Flöhrsheim-Dahlsheim/ Germany), Marco Schelp (Berlin/ Germany) and Klaus Rader (Munich) finished seventh in the overall classification and as fastest gullwing race car in the field. The sister car entered by ROWE RACING with drivers Hubert Haupt (Munich), Roland Rehfeld (Blankenfelde/ Germany) and Alexander Roloff (Berlin/ German) again was amongst the fastest vehicles in the field and close to a final position on the podium for a long part of the race before, 50 minutes before the race end, they got a technical failure and had to retire.
The seventh overall position achieved by the driver trio Zehe, Schelp and Rader was due to a fantastic fight in moving up. After an accident of Klaus Rader in the morning during the timed practice session, start driver Michael Zehe had to take the start from the pit lane, which means from the last position in the first starting group. At the scheduled change of drivers, the gullwing race car with start number 13 had already moved up into place ten. His team mates Marco Schelp and Klaus Rader went the same pace as their start driver and gained additional places so that they were able to celebrate a seventh overall position at the end of the four hour race distance.
A prefect start of the race had also the second ROWE RACING Mercedes which took the start from eighth grid position. Hubert Haupt: “I had a perfect start and moved up into fifth position after only a few corners. Thereafter and until our pit stop, I was even able to further move up into fourth place, that was really great fun!” Under perfect weather conditions (sunshine, 20°C) at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, this was a quick race with lap times of 8:12 in the top group. Alxeander Roloff, too, who proceeded to the second stint was able to go the same pace so that he was able to change to final driver Roland Rehfeld one hour before the race end into third position. With a place on the podium within reach, he was however stopped due to a technical suspension problem.
Team manager Hans-Peter Naundorf: “All together, this was a successful weekend for our team. Like many times during the current year, it was however not as perfect as we had hoped for. Our car number 13 had gone off in the qualifying and we had to stop the session. The repair of the damage took so long that the car had to take the start from the pit lane. For car number 15, the qualifying session was running as scheduled. We were nevertheless slowed down in our last fast lap due to several yellow flags and dropped back from second place into position eight. It is difficult for us to understand how cars which completed their last lap behind us were mostly able to set clearly faster times, despite the many yellow flags. After the race start, Hubert Haupt was immediately able to gain some positions and defended his fourth position throughout his stint. Alexander Roloff was even able to move up into third place in his turn. Our final driver Roland Rehfeld unfortunately had to stop in the pits before the last hour had elapsed with a damaged wheel bearing. This is all the more disappointing as we were so close to finishing on the podium.”
Naundorf adds: “Michael Zehe, Klaus Rader and Marco Schelp were able to confirm their fantastic performance with overall position seven after a tough fight through the whole field. Again, a better result would have been possible without the misfortune in qualifying. The repeated retirement of one of our cars due to technical failure demonstrates again that we have to further work on the reliability.”
