By Tarek Ramchani
The first race of the 2013 VLN Endurance Championship was held at the Nürburgring Nordschleife today. In actual fact this was the second round of the season, as round 1 was cancelled two weeks ago, due to the bad weather. Three Audi R8 LMS ultra entered the four-hour event with very mixed results.
The best ranked Audi R8 LMS ultra car was the #44 Twin Bisch Motorsport driven by Dennis and Marc Busch. They come home in eight overall. The two other R8 LMS ultra cars faced troubles. The #14 Prosperia-C. Abt Team Mamerow entry, shared by Christian Mamerow and Thomas Mutsch, failed to make it to the finish line. The same fate befell the #15 Phoenix Racing entry in the hands of Johannes Stuck, Ferdinand Stuck and Luca Ludwig. The race results come after a very hard qualifying session, where it was quite obvious that the Audis would not battle for the win.
Race victory went to the factory supported #19 BMW Z4 GT3 from BMW Team Schubert, with drivers Jorg Müller, Dirk Müller and Augusto Farfus ahead of the #35 Porsche 997 GT3 R of Timbuli Racing, third was the #20 BMW Team Schubert Z4 GT3.
It was a far better race for the Audi TT RS and TTS cars in the SP3T class, with a fine 1-2-3 win. The #331 TT RS car from Raeder Motorsport took the class honours and nineteenth overall. The VLN round 2 saw the debut of the Audi RS 5 quattro in SP8 class, more about this car here.
VLN round 2 race results are here.
Photo credit: Nürburgring official Facebook
