Already three times this year had Phoenix Racing been on the finish podium in the VLN endurance racing championship season at the Nürburgring and amongst those was one victory. For the sixth round and the fourth VLN start of the team which is based at Meuspath near the Nürburgring the situation was looking quite promising to finish again in a top position. But everything turned out to be different: The Audi R8 LMS ultra of the team G-Driver Racing by Phoenix driven by Marc Basseng (Rosenbach/ Germany), Frank Stippler (Bad Münstereifel/ Germany) and Roman Rusinov (Russia) was slowed down by a damages sliding contact in the steering column so that they lost a lot of time at the pits. They finished in 56th position overall out of the 168 sports and touring cars that had taken the start.
“It is really disappointing that we lost more than three laps. Our Audi was pretty fast today and we had a very good setup. We have to keep this for our next race and then make up what we have lost today”, was the summary of Marc Basseng. Frank Stippler and Roman Rusinov, too, apparently were very happy with the Phoenix-R8, had there not been the shifting problems right after the start of the race. Basseng came back to the pits already after the first lap, this being the first of three unscheduled pit stops. “That was a disappointing start of the race. It was not possible to identify the failure clearly so that we proceeded to change various parts, one after the next. Finally we found that a damaged sliding contact was the reason of the problems”, explained GT team manager Bernhard Demmer.
“This can always happen”, said Rusinov. “It is however important that, basically, we had a very good speed with our R8 and that we could go the pace of the top teams. It was great to be back at the Nordschleife, I enjoyed each and every lap.” The team was then able to catch up a little until the race finish but a better place than 56th overall was not possible under the circumstances and after having lost three laps.
With a time of 8:05.152 minutes, Frank Stippler had achieved fifth start position with the G-Drive Racing by Phoenix Audi R8 LMS ultra after the timed practice. “That had already been the first small disappointment on that day because I had to bread heavily in my fast lap on the long straight at the Döttinger Höhe when a car in front of me was braking suddenly due to a yellow flag – not a double waved yellow flag. This lap could have moved us in first grid position.”
