After another extraordinary 24 Hour race around the Nurburgring it’s time to reflect on what we saw, what we might have liked to have seen but didn’t and what it all means moving forward.
Huge congratulations are due to the Black Falcon team, to Nicki Thiim and to new dad Jeroen Bleekemolen but certainly more so to the extraordinary combo of Bernd Schneider and Sean Edwards.
As drama unfolded behind him Edwards showed sublime composure and controlled pace, preserving much of the lead that had been built up steadily by storming double stints after the overnight red flag stoppage from both himself and the seemingly evergreen Schneider.
This, astonishingly, was Schneider’s first finish at the 24 Hours after a quartet of dnfs. He was very pleased indeed that it also brought the first ever overall win for Mercedes Benz, a marque with which the ex F1 and DTM man has become synonymous with. His pace in the constantly changeable conditions was mind blowing, and the manner of his achieving it even more so – The #9 crew needed to attack after the timing of the red flag put them on the back foot and put of the top 10, Schneider led that charge, and despite losing a chunk of time when he aquaplaned off at T1 in the morning rain, he put in the heavy lifting that gave the #9 crew the opportunity to lead and pull away.
Black Falcon are making a habit of winning 24 hour races nowadays with a pair of Dubai 24s also now to their names, no surprise in some ways for a team that has always been seen to approaching endurance racing from the perspective of ‘preparation and presentation is all .
Dunlop too deserve major credit here – Their tyres, on both the Black Falcon and Rowe SLSs were not absolutely the fastest and most consistent in the dry, or in the wet, but when the conditions were changing, as they did throughout this race, they were simply untouchable. A multiple 24 hour race winning driver told me towards the end of the race that in his view the Dunlop rubber was THE determining factor in where the win went this year.
And it could so easily have been a Mercedes 1,2,3 but for one team, and in truth, for one man. The Rowe Racing Mercedes couldn’t match the Edwards/ Schneider charge but were looking likely to fill two steps of a Mercedes clean sweep of the podium. Their gradual climb up the order was classic 24 hour tactics in what turned out to be rather less than 24 hours of running.
And as a winning hand it was comprehensively out-trumped by a man for whom the 24 hours of the Nurburgring will surely mark a further career step forward.
Maxime Martin led the charge for the Marc VDS BMW effort in epic style. In the wet, and layer in the dry he proved capable of taking 20, 30 or even 40 plus seconds out of the advantages ahead from high quality drivers in high quality machinery.
When the rain was approaching the point of forcing the red flag Martin was flying, so much so that decision over where in time to restart the race from would determine whether he did so from anywhere from 11th place up to the overall lead – Truly extraordinary stuff!
He was the undoubted star for the Belgian team who almost single handedly spared BMW blushes after Uwe Alzen effectively ended the race for the #19 Team Schubert Z4 after hitting the rear end of the team’s #20 car so hard that the steering was effectively damaged beyond repair.
That’s not to say that the efforts of the other VDS crew were anything other than 100% too though, Bas Leinders was riding high when the car fell victim to somebody else’s accident.
Porsche’s hopes were in the hands of the crack Manthey squad with the Falken Tires Motorsport car also showing well and leading at one point, the #44 car though had an inconsistent run and was another to pogo up and down the order before one incident too far saw their effective challenge for the win dissolve.
The Fricadelli car had shown well too but fell too far back after a problem to recover.
Manthey pushed hard but, as one of their factory drivers observed wryly to yours truly near to the end of the race, “We can beat a Mercedes, we just can’t beat a Mercedes on Dunlops in this weather!”
The #18 SP7 class (modified GTE spec) 911 RSR pushed hard but just couldn’t live with the pace of the astonishing battle at the front whilst the #50 SP9 (GT3) 911 GT R had a late race issue that dropped it out of the top 10 but even without, that would not have made the podium.
Audi’s dream result in 2012 put them amongst the favourites but again their challenge evaporated with the #2 Abt Mamerow car in immediate trouble from which it never recovered, the #3 Phoenix car lacking the ultimate edge it seemed and the #1 car becoming another car that had a tipsy turvy time.
The #4 car was mighty in qualifying and led convincingly early on, the weather though proved to be its undoing and the challenge faded there too despite the best efforts of Polesitter Franck Stippler and co.
The lead battle in the early stages of the race though weren’t about the Mercedes, BMWs or the Porsches, it was about the Audi being under attack from the #007 Aston Martin, Pedro Lamy kept the target in sight and then in successive stints both Allan Simonsen and Darren Turner took the lead in excellent style, the V12 Vantage proving that it had the pace to get this job done.
That was until the rain came! Stefan Mucke battled the conditions valiantly before the red flag but when the race restarted Pedro Lamy found the weak spot in the Aston armoury, a further year of development though and there will be few that see the AMR car as a totally outside bet!
The Corvette took the popular SP8 class for the larger engined GTs from the handsome, and periodically rapid Lexus LFA GTE after GT Corse Ferrari which had led the class for hours faded with a mechanical issue.
Ginetta almost took the SP 10 class (GT4) but the #65 Nova Race G50 was another car to suffer a late race issue demoting the part British crewed car and giving the splendidly monikered Bonk Motorsport a 1,3 for their well prepped BMW M3 GT4s.
Behind, and in some cases in amongst and indeed ahead of these battles were no fewer than 15 other classes with the rapid SP3T and SP4T Audi TTs and the Subaru almost blasting into the top 20 at times courtesy of great traction and power that they could use in the sometimes treacherous conditions.
There were three very impressive clubmans cars from major manufacturers, all making inroads it seems to the ranks of the more elderly BMWs and VWs we usually see here.
Peugeot’s new 208 GTI was here for the first time with Bruno Famin looking after a trio of the purpose built little racers, and a mighty convincing weapon they proved to be, comprehensively seeing off the challenge of the BMW Minis in SP2.
We saw the first of the Toyota GT86s last year but they were back in numbers for 2013 and look set to be an important part of the club mans scene at the Nurburgring and beyond from here on in, a pair of class wins in SP3 and for the Clubmans car in V3 won’t do any harm at all to TMG’s sales pitch!
And the handsome new Opel Astra OPC cars were another worthy addition to the feeding pool with the next batch of 20 already reportedly a sell out we could well be seeing a lot more of these cars too in future, adding a 21st century chapter to the Opel endurance racing story that has been held up for year after year by the valiant and hugely popular Kissling Motorsport Manta.
Finally there was the red flag which for some ruined the spectacle of the 24 Hours, certainly we had precious little night running to savour, but there will be few that could reasonably disagree with the decision to halt the race until morning after a huge rainfall left the Nordschleife even more hazardous than normal!
“Mercedes won the first 15 hours of the Nurburgring” said one press room wag, but that crack demeans the way that the teams approached both parts of the race, with Audi and Aston Martin dominating the earlier part and Porsche, then BMW and finally Mercedes producing action to savour from flag to flag and with one elder statesman of the sport (Bernd Schneider) adding another campaign medal to a chest full of honours and a pair of young chargers, Messrs Edwards and Martin, showing that the sport’s future might be very bright indeed.
GG
