Rowe Racing had to retire at the seventh round of the VLN endurance racing championship while they were leading the race. A rear right suspension damage due to several impacts caused by some AMG make colleagues spoiled their fourth victory in the fourth year at the Opel 6h ADAC Ruhr-Pokal race. Klaus Graf had to stop the SLS AMG GT3 with start number 7 after 22 laps. His team mate Christian Hohenadel (GER) had passed over the gullwing race car to him shortly before on position one.
Until their retirement, the racing team from Worms/ Germany convinced with a brialliant performance. In the qualifying which took place in the morning in difficult weather conditions, the team showed a superior performance and gained one of the top positions on the grid. The track was still wet when Hohenadel started the race from P3 and went into the lead right in the first corner. He had an exciting battle with another Mercedez-Benz gullwing during the following laps and the two cars were able to move away quickly from the field with 167 participants. Their fight was as close as to some hundredth of a second and the lead changed in almost every lap. Unfortunately they had several contacts as a consequence. In the second half of his double stint, Hohenadel then gained a superior advance of more than 30 seconds ahead of the second-placed car which was then further increased by Klaus Graf. In lap 22 then on the section at the Grand Prix Circuit, Graf reported a technical problem. At the unscheduled pit stop, they realized that the lower rear right wishbone was broken, a consequence of the earlier contacts with another Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 – a bitter retirement.
„Our target today was to gain the fourth victory in a row at the 6h Race. We dominated the race and our competitors in a superior way at the moment when we had to retire. We have actually done all things right but we did not expect our make colleagues to be so aggressive. We will nevertheless come back and take up the fight again. I wish to thank again all of my team, from drivers to tyre mechanics, for an excellent and superior performance which was this weekend unfortunately not rewarded from the competitive point of view. We have to look ahead now because we will come back here to the Nürburgring in two weeks‘ time for the Blancpain Endurance Series and have the opportunity to gain the title there“, said Rowe Racing team director Hans-Peter Naundorf.
