By Tarek Ramchani
Phoenix Racing has announced its full season commitment in the German Endurance Series. Also known as the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring or simply VLN, exclusively run on the big Nordschleife.
The Nürburgring based team is no stranger to the Nordschleife and the VLN Series. While racing mainly in ADAC GT Masters in 2011, the team did selected VLN events and even won the season finale overall with their Audi R8 LMS. For the 2012 opener, team Phoenix will field two Audi R8 LMS race cars with a strong and competitive driver line-up. The #5 Audi R8 LMS will have Audi works driver Oliver Jarvis and young German Rene Rast. Both aren't new to the team, Jarvis drove for Phoenix in the DTM series in 2008 and 2009. Rene Rast was a Phoenix driver last year in ADAC GT Masters. The sister #15 car has got a strong squad. Markus Winkelhock, long time Audi factory driver in the DTM will be joined by two Phoenix regulars, Frank Stippler and Christopher Haase, who both have a lot of experience with the Audi R8 LMS.
The two Audi R8 LMS cars will race in the top SP9 class which is open for FIA GT3 spec cars. Phoenix Racing will without a shadow of doubt be among the strong teams targeting for the outright win. The opposition will come from another Audi team (Raeder Motorsport), but mainly from AMG Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche teams with most of them being factory backed teams.
The VLN Endurance Series will have a ten round calendar. The first race of the season is this weekend with the 59 ADAC Westfalenfahrt, a 4 hour event.
More Information:
Phoenix Racing official website
