Bright sunshine all around the Nürburgring Nordschleife and beaming faces in the Aston Martin team: The teams that have taken the start at the most beautiful and the most demanding race track of the world on behalf of the British traditional car manufacturer Aston Martin have achieved fantastic successes at the ninth round of the VLN endurance racing championship Nürburgring. Aston Martin customer teams for example achieved a superb triple success in class GT4, the V12 Vantage entered by the Aston Martin Test Centre at the Nürburgring achieved second place in class SP8, finishing on the podium, and the privately entered GT3 race car driven Stuart Leonard and Paul Wilson from Great Britain did remarkably well finishing fifth in the very competitive class GT3.
“We will keep a positive memory of the 11 October for a long time”, said Wolfgang Schuhbauer (Brilon/ Germany), Director of the Aston Martin Test Centre at the Nürburgring. This was the first time ever since the introduction of class GT4 in the VLN endurance racing championship in the year 2009 that a manufacturer managed to complete the top three positions. This achievement of Aston Martin at the ninth VLN race is the result of many hours of hard work completed by all the teams. It is not only that we feel extremely comfortable at the Nürburgring, this is also the best endurance test which our cars can undergo, whether it concerns true racing or the tests of new production models.”
The class win went to Norbert Bermes (Krefeld/ Germany), Wolfgang Weber (Vilshofen/ Germany) and Hendrik Still (Schalkenbach/ Germany) for the fifth time this year. After 25 race laps, the driver trio of the team Mathol Racing had gained an advance of one lap ahead of their sister car, also entered by Mathol and driven by Scott Preacher (Rothenburg o.d.T./ Germany) and double starter Bermes entered by the STADAvita Racing Team. The Aston Martin V8 Vantage of the Team RCM/HRT Performance with drivers Michael Czyborra (Wandlitz/ Germany), Peter Terting (Cologne) and Mathias Hüttenrauch (Schlangen/ Germany) completed the so far unique triple.
A brilliant result was also scored by Egon Allgäuer (Austria) and Florian Kamelger (Italy) in the Aston Martin V12 Vantage S entered by the team of the Test Centre at the Nürburgring. They finished in second place out of seven starters in the class of VLN Specials up to 6,200 cc cylinder capacity. “This was a fantastic day. The car was running perfectly and we did not make the slightest mistake. It couldn’t be any better”, was the summary of the happy driver duo. Wolfgang Schuhbauer and Andreas Bänziger from Switzerland were not that happy. They were competing in the same class with their Aston Martin V8 Vantage N430 but had to retire after three laps already.
A remarkable result was achieved by the two privateers Stuart Wilson and Paul Wilson. The two British sports car drivers finished in a notable fifth position in the very competitive GT3 class with their Aston Martin Vantage GT3, a customer car that is serviced by Aston Martin Racing from Great Britain onsite at the race track. In the overall classification with 191 starters, they were shown in sixth place.
The endurance racing season at the Nürburgring is slowly but surely coming to its final. The last race will take place on 25th October and it will run over the usual four hour distance. A 30 minute summary of the ninth race will be shown in channel Sport1 on 18th of October at 16:25hrs.
