It seems that Phoenix Racing is a little unlucky in front of their own house. One week after the DTM victory of Mike Rockenfeller in Moscow and simultaneously with the podium success of Markus Winkelhock and Niki Mayr-Melnhof at the race of the Blancpain Sprint Series in Portugal, the team of Ernst Moser still did not find a way back on the road to success at this seventh round of the VLN endurance racing championship at the Nürburgring. Due to an accident, the Audi R8 LMS ultra driven by Christian Mamerow, Anders Fjordbach and Nicki Thiim retired about 45 minutes before the end of this race which is the only one in the season to run over six hours.
In changing weather conditions, Christian Mamerow set a qualifying time of 8:42.892 minutes at the 24.358 kilometres long track combination of the Nordschleife and the short version of the Grand Prix Circuit and gained eighth position on the starting grid which comprised 161 touring and sports cars. When the tyre choice had to be taken half an hour before the start and considering the weather, the Phoenix Team decided to fit so-called intermediates which should turn out to be a good decision in particular for the first laps. Nicki Thiim had a perfect start and came to the pits after six laps for their first stop in order to change to slick tyres and to hand over the steering wheel to his young country fellow Anders Fjordbach. The 24 years old who will compete for Phoenix-Racing in two more VLN races convinced in his first race in the Audi R8 LMS ultra at the Nordschleife with fast lap times and changed to Christian Mamerow in the 15th race lap.
Depending on the situation in the race due to the teams‘ various pit stop strategies and intervals, the team of Phoenix Racing ranked between positions two and seven. After the 24th race lap, Nicki Thiim returned into the cockpit before he handed over the car again to Anders Fjordbach in the 33rd lap. In the second lap of his stint, the young race driver from Denmark lost control of the Phoenix Audi in the section Brünnchen and went off the track. The damage on the car was not too bad but they had to stop the race in their 35th race lap.
„Our Audi was running very well both in practice and the race“, said Phoenix team manager Dirk Theimann. „A position in the top five would have been possible, but such a kind of mistake can happen anytime.“
A final strong push in the 2015 VLN season will now be following with three four hour races on 3rd, 17th and 31st October.
