Christopher Mies and Connor de Phillippi crowned their 2016 season with a another overall victory, the Land Motorsport duo secured their third victory in the “Green Hell” at the 41st DMV Münsterlandpokal.
In an extremely exciting race, the new champions of the ADAC GT Masters chose the optimal tyre at any time. At the start of the race the tarmac was still very wet, with it soon thereafter starting to gradually drying off.
“Today, the weather was the biggest challenge. After the first stint, we stayed on rain tires and went for a safe strategy. This may have cost us a bit of time, but during out final pit stop we didn’t have to keep an eye on the mandatory pit stop time,” said Christopher Mies after the race. By winning the finale race of the season the duo also secured the VLN Speed Trophy for Land Motorsport, the championship is awarded to the cars gunning for the overall victory.
Qualifying saw Jörg Müller set the fastest time aboard the BMW M6 GT3 entered by the BMW Team RBM. In their first race outing in the “Green Hell” the Belgian team took home a second place. In the beginning of the race Jörg Müller fought for the overall lead but a very early change to slick tyres lead to some loss of valuable ground to the lead groupe. Something BMW Junior Nico Menzel couldn’t recover. After the race Menzel was very happy, due to the fact that this was just his second outing in a GT3 car.
“This is just crazy, I have to thank BMW and the team RBM for this opportunity and their confidence. I hope that after today I will have many more races like this around this great track.”
The Haribo Racing Team was still on course overall, until just before the three-hour mark, when Uwe Alzen had an impact with the barriers leading to a retirement for the Mercedes-AMG GT3. As a result Victor Bouveng, Jesse Krohn and Christian Krognes in the Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 took home third place.
“I drove the opening sting and that was certainly one of the hardest stints I ever raced around this track, it was hard to keep temperature in the tires. Third place was the maximum for us, there were a lot of good teams and drivers here, which is why we are very happy with the result,” explained Jesse Krohn after the race.
Nico Bastian, Clemens Schmidt and Maximilian Buhk missed a podium finish by just 40 seconds and had to settle for fourth place with their Mercedes-AMG GT3 entered by HTP Motorsport. Sebastian Asch, Marc Gassner and Florian Strauss secured fifth place in the Zakspeed Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3. The Porsche 911 GT3 R of the Frikadelli Racing Team crossed the finish line in sixth place, behind them Thomas Mutsch and Felipe Fernandes Laser brought their SCG003C home in seventh place Rank eight went to the Wochenspiegel Team Manthey Porsche, the second Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW and the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup of Black Falcon rounded out the top 10.
The race also saw a successful first outing for the new Audi RS3 LMS, with the two cars entered crossing the line in 18th and 22nd position after four hours. Kelvin van der Linde, Jordi Gene, Rahel Frey and Christopher Haase were able to gain valuable data for the development of the new TCR car by Audi and in doing so were also capable of putting in the same times as their TCR competitors.
Bentley was also present at the VLN season finale, with a single car entered by Abt Sportsline and M-Sport for Christer Jöns, Maxime Soulet and Andy Soucek. The overall title, awarded to the car that has the most competitors in its class went to Michael Schrey and Alexander Mies, the younger brother of Christopher.
The duo raced a BMW M235i Racing Cup in the ultra competitive Class 5, scoring eight class victory and two third place finishes. With just eight results counting towards the championship, they were already crowned champions two races ago.
