René Rast and Kuba Giermaziak took their first win in the NLS in Saturday’s NLS3, the 45th RCM DMV Grenzlandrennen.
The pair took their Scherer Sport Team Phoenix Audi R8 LMS GT3 to the win with a huge push needed in the last 30 minutes.
“Of course, I was hoping that we would win. We had to fight hard for that, especially in the last two stints. It was a lot of fun. The BMW was extremely strong. Every victory, no matter in which racing series, is valuable. Today’s is very important to me,” said Rast.
Christian Krognes was constantly breathing down his neck in the Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M4 GT3. The Norwegian tried everything, once coming close to passing Rast when he attacked him around the outside at the Bilstein corner, but in the end, the traffic on the track prevented any more promising moments.
In the end, Krognes and teammate Sami-Matti Trogen were 4.673 seconds behind the victorious Audi R8 LMS GT3. “That was a close race. There was always a small gap, but I couldn’t fill it. I did my best, but René was very quick. We had changed a little bit in the setup of the car, which made the car a little more difficult to control. But we had to try something to be able to overtake him,” said Krognes. Despite his best result so far in the NLS, Trogen, who comes from sim racing, also seemed a little disappointed: “We had the opportunity to win. The differences between real and virtual racing are marginal. Second place is a solid result.”
The day was an all-round success for team boss Ernst Moser: Frank Stippler and Vincent Kolb finished third for the Audi crew, 2:20.775 minutes behind. “My start was good, I had a good duel with ‘Onkel’ Stolz. When I was in the lead, I handed it over to Vincent and he did a good job, even though he was recently ill with Corona. It was unclear whether he would be able to keep up the stints in terms of strength. So P3 was the best and we are overjoyed. Congratulations to the sister car, this is a great result for Phoenix,” said Frank Stippler and Kolb added: “My first stint was a bit overgrown, so I wasted time. In the last stint I was able to drive out a lot again. I had Corona for ten days now. That’s why I’m generally satisfied.”
For a long time it looked like a three-way battle between Audi, BMW and Mercedes-AMG. But 77 minutes before the end Hubert Haupt had to park his Mercedes-AMG GT3 in third place with a puncture on the left rear at Döttingerhöhe. Together with Luca Stolz, the team boss of the Haupt Racing Team was at times even in front of the large field on the legendary Nordschleife.
A whole Mercedes armada raced just past the podium. Luca-Sandro Trefz, Patrick Assenheimer and the young Swiss Julien Apotheloz, who drove very courageously in the first part of the race in particular, secured fourth place for Landgraf Motorsport ahead of the two Schnitzelalm Racing teams (pictured below) Marcel Marchewicz and Miklas Born as well as Carrie Schreiner and Peter Terting.
The performance of the American Janine Shoffner and her partner Moritz Kranz was strong again. Despite adverse circumstances, the duo won again in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the GetSpeed team in the NLS comeback in the SP9 Am class. Due to a yellow card offense in the qualification, you had to start from the last position in the group. “I missed the Nordschleife, it’s nice to be here again. And then to be able to claim a class win straight away feels great,” said Shoffner.
Class victory in the CupX for the birthday boy Felix von der Laden.
In the Porsche Endurance Trophy Nürburgring Cup2, the Black Falcon team repeated the class victory from NLS2 with the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (992) and the drivers Tobias Müller and Paul Harkema.
In Cup3, Jens Moetefindt, Moritz Oberheim and Thorsten Wolter from the FK-Performance Motorsport team used the technical problems of the winners of the first two races, Mauro Calamia, Ivan Jacoma and Kai Riemer, to achieve their first success of the season. The trio from Schmickler Performance powered by Ravenol was only sixth this time. Janis Waldow also celebrated a class victory with Max Lamesch and Andreas Patzelt on the debut of Waldow Performance with the Mercedes-AMG GT4 in SP10. Felix von der Laden gave himself a present on his 28th birthday:
First place in the CupX class together with Georg Griesemann, Maik Rönnefarth and Yves Volte in the KTM X-Bow GTX from Teichmann Racing.
After three races, the leaders in the championship are Oskar Sandberg, Sindre Setsaas and Daniel Zils, who celebrated their third victory in the VT2 class with rear and four-wheel drive with the BMW 330i (G20) of the Adrenalin Motorsport Team Alzner Automotive. On their heels are the two-time Cup2 winners Müller/Harkema (BLACK FALCON Team IDENTICA); Third are JayMo Härtling and Michael Sander, who clinched one win and two second places in their class with the BMW M240i Racing from Schnitzelalm Racing.
The NLS continues on July 9th with the ROWE 6h ADAC Ruhr Cup race.
Pics courtesy and copyright of Frozenspeed
