There will be 172 cars on the track, when the ROWE 6 Stunden ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen VLN race will be run on Saturday.
The VLN races are usually run over 4 hours, but this single race needs a bit more strategy at the participating teams. Furthermore the drivers are already using this race as a qualification for the leve of Nordschleife license, which is needed for the Nürburgring 24 Hours.
BMW is using this race for this specific purpose, to qualify their three junior drivers, German Dennis Marschall, Dutch Beitske Visser and Danish driver Mikkel Jensen. They will participate in an BMW M235i Racing Cup #693, which will be serviced by Team Securtal Sorg Rennsport.
Photo: JJ Media
After a bit of weak SP9 showing by the numbers at the 4 hour race in July, we are back to 16 entered GT3 car in that category. BMW, Porsche, Mercedes-AMG and Audi are all going to start. The Falken Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 #3 won the previous round and will enter this round too. Jörg Müller will start again, but he will have a new co-driver, since Stef Dusseldorp will be replaced by Alexandre Imperatori, though that shouldn’t hamper the car too much. But all works supported teams will enter their best possible drivers this weekend. However there is a date clash with DTM running at Zandvoort. That results in drivers like Rene Rast and Maro Engel won’t be starting this weekend – but does that really matter, when they can just pick the next guy in their big internal phone book?
It is, however, another Mercedes that attracts a lot of attention. The brand new Mercedes-AMG GT4 will get its racing debut with two cars, run by Black Falcon and Uwe Alzen Automotive. The cars don’t have any GT4 homologation yet, so they will run in the SPX category, competing with a Porsche Cayman GT4 CS MR. It’s a quite subtle on the driver site, with only Jan Seyffarth and Thomas Jäger ringing the international bell. The other drivers are not quite so big names, but still with VLN experience.
The fifth round of this years VLN Championship has race start at 12.00 CET on Saturday, and can be followed via live video streaming on VLN.de or Radiolemans.com.
