Reports

VLN - 50. ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup Report

© VLN.de

While the focus for most endurance and GT racing fans was at Monza this weekend, the VLN BFGoodrich Langstrecken Meisterschaft Nürburgring completed its second round this weekend at the 24,433km long Nürburgring-Nordschleife. On Saturday morning the qualifying session took place, while the four hour long race started just after noon.

The Zakspeed-Viper had taken pole position for the race but shortly before the start it was put back and started the race from tenth place. As the race started two Manthey Porsches and the HISAQ Porsche were in the lead, with the other teams doing their best to catch up.

First lap leader Dumas made a mistake under braking, which allowed Stippler to pass him and take the race lead. As the cars went into the second lap several top teams saw their race end early. First it was the Phoenix Aston Martin of Wendlinger and Lechner that went off at Brünnchen, only a few minutes later the Alzen Porsche went into the barriers at Schwalbenschwanz.

At the end of the third lap the Manthey Porsche came The Zakspeed Viper had meanwhile gotten back to the front and was battling it out with the HISAQ Porsche, swapping positions lap after lap, until the Viper retired after one hour of racing with power steering problems. When all the teams had at least made one pit stop it was still the HISAQ Competition car leading the race. The car driven by Frank Stippler and Marino Franchitti did not hit any trouble, unlike their opponents and kept increasing the gap to the rest of the field.

After 20 laps, three hours into the race, Stippler/Franchitti had already taken a comfortable lead of 1:42 over the second placed #106 Wochenspiegel-Porsche and almost three minutes on the #125 Paragon Porsche. An unscheduled pit stop nearly messed up the race for the HISAQ team, but fortunately the car was out quick enough to stay ahead of the rest of the field.

As the chequered flag came out at 16:15 it was the HISAQ Competition Porsche winning the second round of the championship, the first win of the team in only its second outing in the series. The Paragon AG Porsche of Hardt/Frers was classified as second, with the Wochenspiegel Team Manthey Porsche of Weiss/Jacobs/Pietsch finishing in third place, despite getting a two-minute penalty for ignoring the waved flags.

The next round of the championship will take place on Saturday May 10th, with the 39th running of Adenauer ADAC Rundstrecken-Trophy. Like this weekend the race will start around noon and will last for four hours.