In the fifth race of the ADAC RAVENOL Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, Team Scherer Sport PHX secured overall victory. In the Audi R8 LMS GT3 evo II, Christopher Haase, Alexander Sims and Ben Green crossed the finish line in first place after 28 laps. In second place was the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 from Red Bull Team ABT, driven by Luca Engstler, Mirko Bortolotti and Patric Niederhauser. The podium was completed by Thomas Preining and Matt Campbell, who drove the Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R to third place. The top five was rounded off by Mercedes-AMG Team RAVENOL in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 in fourth place and ROWE RACING in the BMW M4 GT3 in fifth place.
In the top qualifying session, which decided the starting grid for the second race of the ADAC 24h Nürburgring Qualifiers, the Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo26 from REALIZE KONDO RACING with Rinaldi made a big impression: with a lap time of 8:10.275 minutes, Thierry Vermeulen secured pole position. The margin was historically narrow: just a single thousandth of a second separated him from the second-placed BMW M4 GT3 from Gamota Racing (8:10.276 mins). Starting driver Dennis Marschall initially managed to hold onto the lead after the lights went out and battled in the leading group, but fate struck mercilessly after around 40 minutes. During an overtaking manoeuvre coming out of Brünnchen, the Ferrari collided with a car it was lapping and ended up in the gravel trap.
In the first half of the race, the thrilling battle at the front of the field between Christopher Haase in the Scherer Audi and Max Verstappen in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 flared up once again, looking almost exactly like a carbon copy of their duel in NLS2. Haase enjoyed the once again very respectful battle, but admitted that this time he found it much harder going due to a lack of balance and oversteer in the cold conditions. Although the action provided plenty of adrenaline at the command centre, according to Steve Buschmann, team manager of Verstappen’s entry team Winward, Verstappen was given the clear instruction “no risk, take it easy” so as not to jeopardise his finish. After 90 minutes, however, Verstappen, who was leading, made an unscheduled pit stop, where damage to the front splitter was discovered. “We brought the car in for safety reasons, to prevent anything worse from happening, and are using the remainder of today’s race as a test run,” said Buschmann. This gave Lucas Auer the opportunity to gain valuable race experience in heavy traffic.
The joy among the victorious Audi team was understandably immense following their success. Christopher Haase summed up the day with satisfaction: “The feedback for the 24-hour race was, of course, the most important thing today. Finishing at the top is a nice bonus, but the focus was on working on the set-up.” His team-mate Ben Green added: “The car felt consistent over the entire distance. We managed the lead well in the closing stages.”
The final stages of the battle for the last podium place proved particularly dramatic. Thomas Preining (#911) and Fabian Schiller (#80) engaged in an intense, lap-long duel, with the two cars often separated by just centimetres. Ultimately, Preining came out on top and held on to a lead of just under three seconds as he crossed the finish line. Speaking into the microphone, Preining described the fierce battle from his perspective: “Fabian tried everything and was right alongside me at times, but I managed to close the door on him every time. It was racing at the absolute limit, but always fair.”
In the SP 9 Pro-Am class, the Schnitzelalm Racing team secured the class victory. Kenneth Heyer, Jay Mo Härtling and Jannes Fittje drove the Mercedes-AMG GT3 (#11) to a strong eighth place in the overall standings. In the SP 9 Am class, the BLACK FALCON Team EAE triumphed. Mustafa Mehmet Kaya, Thomas Kiefer, Gabriele Piana and Mike Stursberg demonstrated impressive consistency in the Porsche 911 GT3 R (#5). Having already impressed in qualifying with a tenth-place finish, they were able to replicate this performance in the race and secure victory in their class.
Car number 81 also put in an impressive performance outside the pure GT3 front-runners. The BMW M3 Touring won the SP-X class and fought its way up to an excellent seventh place overall, managing to finish ahead of numerous pure-bred GT3 cars in the standings.
Sven Markert, Edoardo Bugané and Benjamin Albers from the Adrenalin Motorsport Team Mainhattan Wheels (winners of the BMW M240i class) and Oskar Sandberg and Alexander Fielenbach from Smyrlis Racing (winners of the Cup 3 class) head into a short NLS break until June as the mid-season champions after five of ten races. The NLS regulations stipulate that a discarded result is only counted from the ninth race onwards, and two such results from the tenth race. As the opening race could not take place due to weather conditions and the fourth race on Saturday was also abandoned, the season now comprises a total of eight races. This means there will be no further discard results this year, and every result will count in full towards the final drivers’ standings. Both teams have scored maximum points at all events so far and therefore jointly lead the standings at the halfway point of the season.
Despite all the sporting highlights, Sunday was marked by mourning for Juha Miettinen. The Finnish driver was killed on Saturday in a pile-up during the start of the first race whilst driving his BMW 325i (#121). Before Sunday’s start, a deeply emotional minute’s silence united the drivers, teams and fans on the grid. In his address, Nürburg’s parish priest Klaus Kohns found moving words: “Perhaps this is the most important message we can take away from these days: that we belong together and are there for one another – especially in times of need.” It was a moment of deep solidarity that brought the motorsport community around the Nürburgring closer together and served as a reminder that, in such dark hours, human connection extends far beyond sporting competition.
The qualifiers served as a dress rehearsal for the ADAC RAVENOL 24h Nürburgring from 14 to 17 May, where NLS teams make up the bulk of the starting grid. The 1st ADAC Eifel Trophy will kick off the second half of the season in the ADAC RAVENOL Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie on 20 June.
