24H Nürburgring: Mettler lives his dream 🎥

For more than 20 hours, Yannick Mettler and his teammates Marek Böckmann, Tristan Viidas and Tobias Müller in Black Falcon's Mercedes-AMG GT4 dueled with the BMW M4 GT4 of Hofor Racing powered by Bonk Motorsport. When a wheel bearing had to be replaced on the car of the Swiss-German team, this meant the preliminary decision.

Smooth march through
Mettler's team also remained faultless in the remaining four hours and brought home the win with a three-lap lead and no scratches on the car. For last year's VLN GT4 champion, this fulfilled the dream of a hat-trick in the Green Hell. He had won in the BMW Racing Cup in 2017 and 2018.

Yannick Mettler: "This was another sweep without the slightest problem or mistake from the whole team. It's amazing - I thought it was unlikely that it would work for the third time. On the day, our pace wasn't quite as good as the BMW's, but we compensated for that during the night and then managed the lead on Sunday as well. It's a shame that our direct rivals had damage, otherwise it would probably have been exciting at the end. They probably pushed their car a little harder than we did."

Back to Autorama Wolf Team
The Hofor-Bonk BMW of owner Martin Kroll still finished in a good second position. And in third place, the BMW team with Manuel Amweg was also still eligible for a prize in the GT4 class.

Whether Mettler's run of success continues will become clear as early as next week. For the 24 Hours of Portimao, the former Formula 3 driver will return to the VW Golf GTI TCR fielded by Autorama Motorsport/Wolf-Power Racing, with whom he won at the Dubai 24 Hours in January.

First goosebumps for Jasmin Preisig...
Jasmin Preisig's arrival at the finish line of her first 24-hour race was associated with completely different emotions. The all-female Girls Only team had been working towards this event for months. With the second-best time of the Appenzellerin in her class SP3T, out-driven in the night training, it began also quite well. Because the team spared the VW Golf GTI TCR in the second qualifying session on Friday, this resulted in third place on the grid.

As the starting driver, the 26-year-old from Schwellbrunn AR not only experienced goosebumps on the opening lap, when thousands of spectators line the Nordschleife as usual. She also immediately got to know the disappointing side of this unpredictable endurance race.

Jasmin Preisig: "I noticed a few droplets on the windshield after a few laps. Unfortunately, it wasn't rain... Then the on-board computer told me that the water temperature was too high - and the car dropped into the emergency system."

... then consequential damage of a whirled up screw
After a slow drive to the pits, where the dismayed crew got to the bottom of the problem, it was clear that a screw lying around on the track had destroyed the water cooler. The result was engine damage.

Jasmin Preisig: "We girls didn't give up. All night long, our busy little bees worked in the pit and changed the engine. The Supergirls deserve a lot of praise and thanks, because that's how we were able to get back on the race track after about 14 hours."

The Germans Carrie Schreiner and Ronja Assmann, as well as the Swiss, finally saw the checkered flag, and they were also "mega happy" about it. However, with only 59 laps completed within the 24 hours, the women's team did not make the cut. Those are the rules.

The team reports on its Nürburgring adventure in a professionally made short film lasting around 6 minutes:

Now VLN again
The 24 Hours of Nürburgring are now history. For Yannick Mettler and the Girls-only team, it's back to the Nordschleife for the fourth VLN race on July 13/14. For one of them it almost can't get any better, for the others it can only get better.

yannickmettler.ch

jasminpreisig.ch

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