After the superior start-finish victory at the last VLN round, ROWE RACING again finished in the top group of the 162 starters at the eighth race of the VLN series. In the four hour race over the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 driven by Roland Rehfeld (Blankenfelde/ Germany) and Alexander Roloff (Berlin) finished seventh and thus the racing team from Bubenheim/Germany again made it in the top ten for the tenth time in the current season. The sister car with drivers Michael Zehe (Flörsheim-Dalsheim/ Germany) and guest starter Klaus Abbelen (Barweiler/ Germany) took the chequered flag in 13th place.
The spectators of the 44th ADAC Barbarossapreises, the last but third VLN race in 2012, experienced an exciting race right from the start which start driver Roland Rehlfeld took from sixth grid position. In the very first laps already. the gullwing race car with start number seven was able to apply a lot of pressure on the cars in front and gained some places. Temporarily, the SLS AMG GT3 of Rehfeld and Roloff was shown in fourth position and close to a place on the podium. In the further running of the race, successful attacks and pit stops again and again provided changes in the classification. In the final lap then of the highly competitive race, Rehfeld and Roloff lost their sixth place which they had defended for such a long time and crossed the finish line in seventh overall position.
The SLS AMG GT3 of ROWE RACING with start number six did a brilliant job in catching up. After a not very successful qualifying in the rain on the same morning, Michael Zehe had to take the start of the race from position 33 on the grid. At the end of the first race lap, the gullwing race car was then already shown in place 18 again on the timing monitors. In the following laps, the driver duo Zehe / Abbelen secured a place in the top twenty. Shortly before the end of the four hour race distance, they improved further and were finally classified in place 13 overall.
ROWE RACING team manager Hans-Peter Naundorf: “All in all, we can be fairly happy with the performances shown and the results. Roland and Alex have today provided our tenth place in the top ten in the current season – a great result! We would of course have preferred to extend our series of four successive positions on the podium but we had to realize that some of the other teams were simply faster today. A big thank you also to Klaus Abbelen for his guest start in the team of ROWE RACING. Klaus felt very well in the SLS and I think he had quite a lot of fun.”
The next VLN race will be something like a home game for ROWE RACING as the lubricant manufacturer has assumed the title sponsorship fort her ace. The ROWE 250 Miles Race will take place on 29th September.
