The ex-champions are back on the road to success. Jürgen and Heinz-Otto Fritzsche (both from Hückeswagen/ Germany) as well as Thorsten Wolter (Berlin) scored an impressive race win and took back the lead in the championship at the start to the second half of the VLN endurance racing championship season at the Nürburgring. The experienced driver trio was not only the fastest team in the Opel Astra OPC Cup, they also set the fastest lap times in the Cup-Astra entered by Lubner Event & Motorsport, both in the timed practice and in the race. With the maximum score of 32 points to be achieved at each race weekend, Fritzsche, Fritzsche and Wolter moved back into the championship lead after six of ten races. “That was definitely the right answer after our unfortunate race four weeks ago when we were struggling with a lack of fuel”, said Wolter happily and Heinz-Otto Fritzsche added: “Our Astra was running perfectly, as always – this victory is the well deserved reward for the team and for us drivers after all these huge efforts.”
Into second place in the Cup classification behind the Lubner driver trio followed Mario Merten (Kelberg/ Germany) and Jürgen Nett (Mayen/ Germany). For them, too, the top result represented a positive signal after their bad luck in the last race. Nett had an accident already in the timed practice of the previous fifth round and the driver duo had to watch their competitors gaining valuable points whilst they could not do anything. “The accident is still a painful subject for Jürgen that he has not overcome yet and he was thus not going to his limits”, admitted team manager Michael Bonk. “We have tried to approach the pace slowly and under these considerations our second place is absolutely ok. We will be back to full attack in three weeks’ time at the 6h Race.”
Delighted about their third place is Willy Hüppi (Switzerland) who was competing in the race together with the Nordschleife experienced Alexander Schula (Hattersheim/ Germany). The two drivers lost about four minutes in total to the leaders throughout the race, a good result for the ambitious private driver Hüppi. “That was a great race for me“, said the Swiss who was showing obvious signs of the high temperatures prevailing at the Nürburgring. “I can learn a lot from Alexander. We have changed the setup several times and I feel as if I had competed in three totally different cars during the weekend.” Schula explains: “We had finally found the best setup for the race to save tyres over the distance. So we were able to set fast lap times both at the beginning and at the end of each stint.”
With their seventh place, „Sugar Mountain“ (Bad Lippspringe/ Germany) and Uwe Wächtler (Zwickau/ Germany) were able to defend their second place in the Cup classification. After six rounds, the Team Düchting Motorsport is thus one of the two teams which have taken the chequered flag at each round. The other team is made up of Axel Jahn (Heusweiler/ Germany), Marcel Hartl (Fellbach/ Germany) and Thomas Schulte (Vorderweidenthal/ Germany) in the sister car of the new championship leaders of the team Lubner Event & Motorsport. The car with start number 343 is now shown in fifth place in the overall classification.
The victory in class Cup 1 went to TV moderator Tim Schick (Munich) and Hannu Luostarinen (Adenau/ Germany) for the third time in a row. The driver from Finland scored valuable points for the driver classification in the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring with three class wins, one second and two fifth places in the Cup class which figured the average of 15 cars at each star and he is now in fourth position out of the total of 545 drivers.
The highlight of the VLN endurance racing championship season at the Nürburgring will follow in three weeks’ time with the Opel 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen. On 23rd August, the Cup drivers will not only be competing in the race but they will also join the OPC Ring Drive – a car parade with sporting OPC models. The former DTM car of Heinz-Harald Frentzen will also be presented at the Nürburgring.
