The 43rd Adenauer ADAC Rundstrecken-Trophy turned out to become a very dramatic sprint race for the Team Schmickler Performance. Right after the start, there were fantastic and close fights about the lead in class V6 between the BMW Z4 M-Coupé driven by Markus Schmickler and Dieter Weidenbrück and two other competitors. The lap times of partly below 9:20 demonstrated that all the drivers involved were going to their limits. The decision, however, was not made before the penultimate race lap when the BMW M3 CSL, leading at this moment, stopped at the guardrails in the section Bergwerk. So the way was clear for another win in class V6 and a group victory at the same time in the class of standard production cars.
“At our last refuel stop, we were able to gain 27 seconds as we were calculating extremely short regarding the fuel amount”, said a happy Markus Schmickler. “After the race, we had just a little more than one litre left in our tank, so it was extremely tight.” So the tension towards the race end was very high and it was a great relief when the car finally took the chequered flag and entered the Parc Fermé without any problems.
The cars of the team Schmickler Performance were equally successful in class V4. After one of the cars was excluded from the classification due to too high engine power, the two BMW 325i of the team were classified first and second in the class. Klaus Landgraf and Yannick Fübrich thus scored their first class win of the season and into second place finished Guido Strohe and Stein Tveten. These drivers will hence remain in the top group of the championship classification.
The fourth car, the BMW M3 driven by Guido Wegner and Winni Bernartz, finished the race in seventh place in class V6. After some technical problems in the first rounds, they now finally scored again the lap times which they had expected.
The success of the team certainly represents a high motivation for the next races so that the preparations for the 52nd ADAC Reinoldus-Langstreckenrennen scheduled for 7th of July are already under way.
