The 2014 Nurburgring 24 Hours continued to be finely poised as darkness descended over the Nordschleife. As the clock ticked past 10pm local time with 18 hours still to run, the #26 Marc VDS BMW moved briefly into the lead ahead of long-time first-place car the #4 Phoenix Audi. The #22 Rowe Racing and #14 Black Falcon Mercedes, until then running third and fourth, had just entered the pits.
When the latest pitstop cycle had completed, the top nine runners were still on the lead lap, with the remaining in the hands of the #4 Audi. The #26 Marc VDS car was 10 seconds behind in second, with the #1 Black Falcon Mercedes third, the #20 Schubert BMW fourth and the #14 Mercedes fifth, having dropped back slightly when Abdul Al-Faisal had a stint at the wheel. Stepping out of the #20, Jens Klingmann said: “I had surprisingly little yellows. After we were spun at the start, we’ve had to give it everything we’ve got, but it’s gone well and looking good.”
Some slower laps were recorded as marshals cleared an accident from Hatzenbach, but once things had cleared up the leaders were lapping at just over nine minutes. Approaching 11pm, 147 of the 165 cars that started the race were still running. Elsewhere, Nissan’s difficult race continued with an off between Pflanzgarten and Schwalbenschwanz for the #30 car, which kept going but recorded a slow lap of around 13 minutes.
As in last year’s race after dark, Maxime Martin was the fastest man on track in the #25 Marc VDS BMW, now running just inside the top 10 thanks to a fine recovery driver following Martin’s early spin. Further up the order, the third-place #1 Mercedes was also running quicker than the leading Audi. A pit stop a little later brought an earlier-than-expected brake pad change for the #
Another pitstop for the #20 saw DTM star Martin Tomczyk take over from Dominik Baumann – Tomczyk reporting that the car’s drivers will not be double-stinting during the night. Elsewhere, the troubled #6 Frikdaelli Racing Porsche finally had to call it a day when a defective wheel and ABS failure were added to its litany of problems. The better performing #44 Falken 911 continued its strong top-10 run in seventh.
There was good news for the #26 Marc VDS BMW’s prospects, as it managed to save fuel sufficiently to put in a nine-lap stint – one more than the leading #4 Audi managed with the track in similar condition. The overall lead was now shuffling between the #26, #1 Mercedes and #4 cars as the pitstop cycle worked through. Routine stops for the #26 and #1 saw Palttala and Lance David Arnold remain at the wheel respectively.
Palttala’s co-driver (and Marc VDS team manager) Bas Leinders told us: “We’re pretty happy right now, but it’s so early we need to just concentrate on this hour by hour. I’ve been really impressed with the recovery drive from the #25, they are really pushing, and it’s got them back in the fight. Our biggest concern is our fuel consumption. Unless there are a lot of yellows we can’t manage more than seven laps, whereas the Mercedes can do more than us. We’ll have to see how that pans out for the rest of the race.”
But no sooner had we spoken to Leinders, then there were problems for the leader on lap 50 as Palttala emerged from the pits, but then hit trouble at the NGK chicane and came back in before completing a lap of the Nordschleife – injection system the culprit here. This promoted the #22 Rowe Racing Mercedes to the lead of the race for the first time since the green flag.
Over at Aston Martin, Darren Turner was lamenting what could have been in the #007 Vantage: “We still have a fuel pump issue, and it’s costing us so much time, all the time we are losing is because our stops are so long,” he explained. “We would be right in it at the front too, because our pace is good. In terms of the yellow zones, it’s still really messy. They’re not warning us in advance for them, suddenly you come across a double yellow and you have to slow down really quickly. It’s just too late, there needs to be more communication between the marshals, we need to be told about incidents about five marshal posts sooner than we are right now.”
SE & SK
