The highlight of the VLN Nürburgring endurance racing championship season, the 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen on 23rd August was characterized by changing weather conditions around the track in the Eifel. Heave rain showers alternated with a drying track which made the race over the six hour distances a true tyre poker and requested utmost concentration of the drivers and the pit crews.
The Aston Martin customer teams in class GT4, nonetheless, were not very much impressed by these conditions and scored a strong one-two win. Norbert Bermes (Krefeld/ Germany), Wolfgang Weber (Vilshofen/ Germany) and Hendrik Still (Schalkenbach/ Germany), supported by Scott Preachter (Rothenburg o.d.T./ Germany), celebrated the fourth class win in the Vantage V8 of the team AVIA Racing. The driver quartet completed 34 laps on the 24.358 kilometres long combination of the Nürburgring sprint circuit and the Nordschleife and covered a distance of 828.172 kilometres. In second place followed Michael Czyborra (Wandlitz/ Germany), Peter Terting (Bürwang7 Germany) and Mathias Hüttenrauch (Schlangen/ Germany) in the GT4-Aston-Martin of the team RCM/HTR Performance who achieved their third result in the current season on the podium.
Andreas Bänziger from Switzerland, who made his debut at the Nordschleife, also finished the race successfully. The debutant right away scored the fourth place in the GT4 class together with Florian Kamelger from Italy and Wolfgang Schuhbauer (Brilon/ Germany), Director of the Aston Martin Test Centre at the Nürburgring. In fifth place finished Dmitriy Lukovnikov (Latvia), Andrei Sidorenko (Rosengarten/ Germany), Fredric Ledoux (Belgium) and Hans Robert Holzer (Koblenz/ Germany) in the Vantage entered by the MSC Adenau and thus completed the strong result for the make from the traditional British sports car manufacturer.
“That was a ride on the razor’s blade for all teams today”, said Schuhbauer after the race. “As far as the tyre choice is concerned you could almost only take wrong decisions today. One of the reasons is that due to the distance of the Nordschleife you find totally different conditions from one section to the next. I am really delighted that, under these conditions, the Aston Martin team in class GT4 proceeded with greatest care and reasonably and thus coped with this extreme challenge at the 6h race.”
Stefan Mücke (Berliin) and Pedro Lamy (Portugal) in the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 were not that lucky today at the 6h Race. The whole team had to push hard in several respects. With a sixth place in the timed practice, they were looking forward to a promising race. A collision, which was not their fault, with another car in the final part of the practice however caused some excitement in the team as the Vantage was badly damaged on the front part. The pit crew made all efforts in the break before the race and the GT3 race car was moved to the starting grid literally in the very last second. Mücke and Lamy showed an excellent performance in the first part of the race and moved their Aston martin temporarily up into second place in the high-class leading group of the field. They had to retire then after am off in heavy rain showers in the section Pflanzgarten.
“The GT3 was fantastic in the race”, said Aston Martin Motorsport Director David King. “With our participation in the 6h Race, we have now already started our preparation for next year’s 24h Race. And the performance demonstrates that we are on the right way. We could have achieved a podium position today. I cannot criticize our drivers regarding the accident, this simply happens.”
The VLN endurance racing championship is slowly but surely approaching its finish straight. The calendar includes the 46th ADAC Barbarossapreis, the eighth of ten championship rounds, to take place on 13th September.
