This coming Saturday sees the longest VLN race of the season, the 6 Stunden ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen being the only one that doesn’t run to the four hour norm and instead being run going over six hours. As in previous years, this year’s season highlight sees a substantial increase in grid size, with over 200 cars already signed up.
Increasing their fleet is Phoenix Racing, which will be running three Audi R8 LMS ultra in total, and they have a big comeback aboard the Ferdinand and Johannes Stuck R8, with dad and Nürburgring legend Hans-Joachim Stuck pencilled in as an extra driver, together with Christopher Zöchling. The two additional Audis see the line ups of Christopher Haase, Harold Primat and Frank Stippler – who is also pulling double duty racing in the second extra R8 as well – together with Marc Basseng and Roman Rusinov.
Also posing a very potent Audi R8 lineup is Audi Race Experience, where Christopher Mies joins Marco Werner and Markus Winkelhock. The second R8 is fielded for Rahel Frey, Christian Bollrath, Ronnie Saurenmann and Dominique Bastien. A sixth Audi comes from TwinBusch Motorsport, for Marc and Dennis Busch plus Manuel Lauck.
After scoring their first overall victory, Frikadelli Racing is back out in full force, with Sabine Schmitz having recovered from her knee injury and joining the triumphant trio from the last race: Patrick Pilet, Klaus Abbelen and Patrick Huisman. Falken Motorsport has its Porsche 911 GT3 R back out for another fight for glory, with Peter Dumbreck, Martin Ragginger and Sebastian Asch forming a strong trio. Doing a guest start is the Haribo Racing Team, where Hans Guido Riegel and Mike Stursberg are supposed to pilot the GT3 R, while the three Juniors – Mario Farnbacher, Dominik Brinkmann and Jeffrey Schmidt – are back in their GT3 Cup.
There is a major shake-up in the Porsche camp, with Manthey-Racing fielding their green and yellow RSR in the SP8 class. This is significant due the fact that the SP8 class is for cars with a displacement of over 4.0ltr; so is Olaf Manthey doing a test with a new engine, or did he just move up his RSR one class to keep the championship hopes of the Wochenspiegel-Porsche alive? We will find it out on Saturday what kind of engine is in the back of the RSR, which will be driven by Nick Tandy and Jochen Krumbach.
After scoring a surprise second place the last time out, the BMW Z4 of the Pixum Team Schubert is back for more glory, with its drivers Abdulaziz Al Faisal, Max Sandritter and Dominik Baumann. Poised to get a good result also is the BMW Z4 of Uwe Alzen, Alexandros Margaritis and Philipp Wlazik. After sitting out the last race, the Dörr McLaren has a driver line up of Peter Kox, Rudi Adams and Arno Klasen.
Making a surprise guest start is Fortec Motorsport, with one of their Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3s. Stuart Leonard and Paul Wilson are sharing the steering wheel. The strongest SLS contingent comes from Rowe-Racing, where Nico Bastian is pulling double-duty – sharing one car with Michael Zehe and Marco Hartung and probably fighting for the race win with Lance-David Arnold and Jan Seyffarth.
There is also bad news, though, with Timbuli Racing ditching its 2013 campaign and focusing on 2014. The team recently split with its technical partner, Rinaldi Racing, and plans to field a Porsche 911 GT3 R on their own next season.
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