“Giving up – this is a term that does not exist in our vocabulary”, was the summary of Wolfgang Schuhbauer (Brilon/ Germany) after the eighth round of the VLN endurance racing championship. Even though the V12 Vantage, driven by the Nürburgring Aston Martin Test Centre Director together with Egon Allgäuer (Austria) and Horst von Saurma (Stuttgart/ Germany), crossed the finish line after the 4 hour race time, it had covered only eleven race laps on the 24.358 kilometres long combination of the Nürburgring short version and the Nordschleife and was thus not classified.
In the first part of the race after the start to the ROWE DMV 250 Miles race, Allgäuer suffered some electronic problems so that he was not able to exploit the full potential of the British super sports car and he stopped after a few laps. The technical staff of the team was immediately heading to the car and managed to breathe new life into the Vantage on the track whereupon Allgäuer was able to drive back to the pits. A quick check was carried out on the race car before Horst von Saurma rejoined the race. The long-year chief editor of the specialized magazine sport auto thus collected his first experience in the V12 race car which will be very useful for him at the oncoming super test in the V12 Vantage S. The new model, the most extreme Aston Martin of all times, is currently presented to the public in the United States on occasion of a press launch.
“We knew of course that we would no longer play a role in the results”, said Schuhbauer. “But it was very important for us to keep the Aston Martin V12 Vantage in the race. This is what we owe to our partners and to the many fans around the Nürburgring Nordschleife.” During the race, the team realized that the electronic problems were due to a commercial battery support which did not stand the stress. Schuhbauer: “We were quite surprised about this as this part is fitted in so many other cars where it serves its purpose.”
It was now up to the Aston Martin customer team Rent2Drive Racing, entered in class SP10, to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the traditional British make. The two Russians Dmitriy Lukovnikov and Andrei Sidorenko, together with Matiss Mezaks from Lithuania, finishing third, celebrated a podium position in class GT4 with their Aston Martin V8 Vantage and at the same time scored their best result so far. Not very luck in contrast were Wolfgang Weber (Vilshofen/ Germany), Rickard Nilsson (Balduinstein/ Germany) and Norbert Bermes (Krefeld/ Germany) who unfortunately had to retire early after 21 laps with their V8 Vantage of the team AVIA Racing. The reliable driver trio which is also perfectly attuned to one another was facing a place on the podium in class GT4 over long distances.
A 30 minutes summary of the ROWE DMV 250 Miles Race will be shown in channel Sport 1 on 19 October at 17:30hrs. The final of the season in the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring will take place on 26 October and run over the usual four hours duration.
