The third race of this year’s VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring took place last weekend. The grid included the total of six race cars of the team Ring Racing. The crews of Ring Racing which is based in Boxberg/ Germany all showed a good performance in the race which figured more than 200 cars in total and two of the Ring Racing cars finished on the podium.
As in the previous race of the VLN series in the ‚Green Hell’, three race cars from Japan were at the start under the colours of Ring-Racing. The two brand new Toyota GT 86, all with drivers from Switzerland, started in class V3 of standard production cars up to two litres cylinder capacity and took the chequered flag into second and third positions respectively. At this second participation for the drivers at the Nordschleife, amongst them also Formula driver Natascha Gachnang, it became apparent that their performance had already much improved compared to their first race. They had very quickly got used to the GT86 and to the tricky race track in the Eifel region.
The third race car from Japan was the orange-black Lexus IS-F with the German-Japanese driver quartet Uwe Kleen, Klaus Völker, Kazunori Yamauchi and Yasuyoshi Yamamoto behind the steering wheel. The car retired from the race after about two hours driving time. Yamamoto went off at the section Wippermann due to some oil on the track and had to stop the car then in the Brünnchen section.
After a very promising fourth position in the qualifying, the Renault Clio Cup of Uwe Kleen and Jean-Jacques Meyer also became victim of an oil spot on the track. Kleen lost control over his car and had a collision with another competitor. “I had realized that there were some very slippery passages and was therefore trying to take as much care as possible but at the Hatzenbach section, all of a sudden I became passenger in my own car”, informed Kleen.
Horst Baumann from Bonn/ Germany and his team mate Alexander Prinz from Cologne had more luck. Their Renault Clio went off the track at the same position but hit the guardrails only slightly. The result was a damaged tie rod and a misaligned rear axle. The driver duo nevertheless continued and finished the 54th ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup into twelfth position in the class Clio Cup3. Alexander Prinz explained afterwards: “The car was very nervous but drivable so we tried to do our best under these technical conditions.”
“Engel” and “Bengel” from Cologne in contrast had a race without any problems or mistakes at the legendary circuit in the Eifel regions. They were rewarded with a 14th place amongst the Renault Clio race cars.
The highlight of the season is now approaching very fast. The 24 Hour Race will take place at the Nürburgring from 17th to 20th May. The Ring-Racing team will participate with two Toyota GT 86 and also support the Japanese team of Gazoo Racing.
