Even before the start signal of o the race was given, there was no doubt about the winners of the 5th Benefit Race Race4Hospiz. The true winners are the children and their parents who are taken care of at the children’s and youth hospice Balthasar at Olpe/ Germany.
The total of 32 teams with about 185 highly motivated drivers started the race over 9 hours. The qualifying session already revealed that the fights for the top positions would be very close this year. This turned out to become true as the gap between the team in second place, EiFelkind Racing Team, and the winners of the team AVIA Racing was only 18 seconds.
AVIA Racing with drivers Carina Müller, Jochen Merkle, Stefan Siepmann, Gerrit Holthaus, Manuel Paßberger and Marco Schlimpen succeeded in gaining their third consecutive victory. “What a fantastic race”, said Carina Müller happily after taking the chequered flag. But the other drivers, too, were really enthusiastic after the race.
It has meanwhile become a tradition that the spectators can enjoy a really brilliant show. Track commentator Jürgen Treken kept all the visitors up-to-date, introduced the teams and the drivers and disclosed one or another nice story. One person whom each and every VLN fan knows so well from the microphone was not able to get a word in edgewise but only after the prizegiving ceremony – definitely more than unusual for him. Lars Gutsche had joined the kart team of EiFelkind AllStar in which he was perfectly well supported by Jochen Krumbach. “According to current rumours, Lars will start again next year”, said Erik Kindermann, one of the two key official in the race organisation.
The donation-total at the end of the day came up to about 28,000 Euro. This amount was achieved due to many donations such as lap donations, cash donations and a tombola. “We would never have believed that we were able to increase last year’s result again”, said Heiko Melzow, the second key official in the organisation. They both said a big thank you to all the participants and the donators and they have already started their project plans for next year. “Everybody should already mark the 28th February 2015 in their calendar”, they both said with a smile in their faces.
