Manthey Racing won the 5th round of the VLN Championship, the ROWE 6 Stunden ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen.
The day started with sunshine but later changed to rain, but with a perfect strategy from Manthey Racing #911 with their Porsche 911 GT3 R, Romain Dumas, Kevin Estre and Mathieu Jaminet grabbed the overall win ahead of Martin Ragginger and Klaus Bachler in their Falken Motorsports Porsche #4 while Frank Stippler and Peter Terting in Phoenix-Racing Audi R8 LMS #15 took the final spot on the podium.
The victory was the 6th overall win for Romain Dumas while it was a debut for both Kevin Estre and Mathieu Jaminet.
Even though it was a Porsche 1-2, it wasn’t an easy race for them. Falken Motorsports #4 started from the Pole Position, ahead of Haribo Racing Team Mercedes-AMG GT3 #8, but the Mercedes team couldn’t keep up the pace for all 6 hours, and ended up 11 seconds from the podium in fourth.
Photo: Jan Brucke/VLN
It wasn’t the best of days for the winners from VLN 4 in the shape of Falken Motorsport #3. The BMW M6 GT3 with Jörg Müller and Alexandre Imperatori finished in a disappointing 7th, behind Frikadelli Racing Team Porsche #31 and Black Falcon Mercedes-AMG #7, and was more than a lap behind the winning car.
The first 7 cars was Pro cars in the SP9 category, but in 8th position we saw the first Pro/Am car. That was Schubert Motorsport #20 piloted by Frederik Nymark, Claudia Hürtgen and Felipe Fernandez Laser. It was the debut for Nymark in a GT3 car on the demanding Nordschleife, so it was great debut for the young Dane.
The next round of VLN will be held in two weeks’ time, when the 40. RCM DMV Grenzlandrennen will be run on September 2nd.
