Kévin Estre, Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor drove to victory in the #911 Porsche 911 GT3 R of Manthey-Racing in unseasonably bright sunshine on Saturday, after far more wintry weather in the week leading up to the season-opening VLN round disappeared in time for what proved to be a race run at some pace.
The weather though did play a part, fog still hanging over the circuit delayed qualifying and led to the race itself starting only after a 40-minute delay.
After 28 laps (4: 07: 04.241 hours), the trio’s lead over second-placed Markus Winkelhock and Nico Müller, who drove an Audi R8 LMS for the Audi Sport Team BWT Mücke, was 51.838 seconds. The Klaus Bachler and Sven Müller completed the podium in the Falken Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R.
“Great, finally my first victory on the Nordschleife”, said a delighted Earl Bamber.
It was also a first for Vanthoor, who set the fastest time in the qualifying session with a time of 8: 03.070 minutes. The Belgian celebrated the first Porsche victory of his career: “Finally, I had to wait for more than a year. And then with ‘Grello’ in the Green Hell – terrific.”
The win also came a year on after a last gasp shunt cost Vanthoor an opportunity to break that duck rather earlier, his Falken Porsche eliminated whilst leading VLN 1 in 2017.
The Manthey trio dominated the action at the top over the entire distance. “It was not a walkover, though,” said Estre. “The Nordschleife is always a challenge and it is guaranteed never to be boring.”
For Audi works driver Müller, the first race in 2018 was a good start. “I started for the first time in the Mücke team and I’m thrilled,” he said. “The car was perfectly prepared and we really had a good race. However, qualifying was rather difficult because we had problems getting through the traffic smoothly. ”
Falken’s third place for Bachler and Müller was due mainly to the brilliant strategy of the team. “We made an early pit stop,” said Bachler. “We dropped back to twelfth place, but we were able to fight forward again with fast lap times.”
Behind the top trio, Audi Sport Team Land took fourth place. The best Mercedes-AMG GT3 saw the Mercedes-AMG Team HTP in fifth place. Fastest BMW M6 GT3 was the start number #98 of ROWE Racing. All four German car manufacturers in the GT3 class finished the race in the top 10.
This season, the GT3 class SP9 is divided into three sub-categories for the first time, which are evaluated individually.
The overall winners of the race won the Professional class.
First winners of the new SP9 Premium standings are Steve Jans and Marek Böckmann in the Porsche 911 GT3 R of the GIGASPEED Team GetSpeed Performance.
“Great that it worked right away,” Böckmann was pleased. “That makes us want more and lets us hope for the next races.” Jans received praise for his new, permanent teammate. “Our speed was good and we were competitive. Marek did a great job. We are in very good harmony, both on and off the race track.”
In SP9 Masters, Henry Walkenhorst, Rudi Adams and Andreas Ziegler won in the Walkenhorst BMW M6 GT3.
The fastest Cup Porsche was driven by Marcel Hoppe, Moritz Kranz and Tim Scheerbarth for Mühlner Motorsport. And Group H saw victory for Olaf Beckmann, Peter Hass and Volker Strycek the iconic ‘foxtail’ Opel Manta. The best pilots of the VLN production car classes were Norbert Fischer, Christian Konnerth and Daniel Zils with the Porsche Cayman of Pixum Team Adrenalin Motorsport.
First Championship leaders of the 2018 season then are Bamber / Estre / Vanthoor. As the winner of class SP9, with 19 opponents, they secured 9.75 points for the drivers’ championship (VLN rewards the drivers in each class according to finishing position and the number of cars in their class).
Second are Yannick Fübrich and David Griessner, the winners of the BMW M235i Racing Cup class (9.74 points), followed by Carsten Knechtges and Marcel Manheller (9.71 points), who won class V4 in the Manheller Racing BMW.
The second round of the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring the 43rd DMV 4-hour race of the RG Düren takes place on 7 April. DSC will carry the whole race live in sound and vision with commentary from the RSL team.
Photos courtesy of VLN
