Nürburgring: Forza Ferrari! 🎥
SURROUNDED SWISS VLN WIN The Zurich-based Octane126 team won a race at the Nürburgring for the first time on Sunday with its Ferrari 488. Hours later, disqualification followed due to an unmarked tire. The highlights of Sunday's third VLN round. The Ferrari from Switzerland was still considered the winner. In a tough duel, Björn Grossmann wrestled with [...]
The highlights of Sunday's third VLN round. The Ferrari from Switzerland was still considered the winner.
In a tough duel Björn Grossmann with the Ferrari 488 GT3 developed in Wallisellen wrestled the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Adam Christodoulou down on the last lap. Thus, the South German, who has been driving for Octane126 for years, gave the Zurich team its first triumph on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife on Sunday in the third VLN race of the year, after Simon Trummer, Jonathan Hirschi and Luca Ludwig had done the correspondingly good preliminary work.
In the second session, still without lapping, starting driver Hirschi also set the fastest race lap of all teams in 7'58. Unlike the Swiss, however, some did not quite reveal their cards yet in order not to get a worse BoP rating before the 24-hour race.
Easy come easy go
Octane 126 achieved what is believed to be the third Ferrari victory in the history of the Nürburgring Endurance Series. WTM-Racing last triumphed in the third race in 2017. Farnbacher-Racing made its debut under the sign of the "Cavallino Rampante" in 2011.
The shock then came on Sunday evening. During the technical inspection of the car, which was homologated in GT3 for the first time in 2020, it was discovered that one tire did not comply with the DMSB regulations on the sample tire procedure. The team was then disqualified.
"Wrong" tire was correct, but the marking was not
A tire with a designated specification was used on the left rear of the car with the starting number 26, which was not listed by the manufacturer in the Box1 list, according to the written reasons given by the stewards. According to the regulations, each tire manufacturer must deposit one sample slick tire per specification at each event.
However, the team will appeal this decision. Octane126 has three pieces of evidence and the statements of tire partner Goodyear that the wrong designation was a mistake by the manufacturer during production. The tire used itself corresponded in every respect to the sample tire, which can be proven during the "postmortem".
Pending the decision of the Court of Appeals, the result remains provisional.
Two wins for the same Mercedes quartet
The following teams move up in the provisional overall classification. The provisional overall winner and winner in the top class SP9-Pro is one of the three new Mercedes-AMG GT3s from the Haupt Racing Team.
Manuel Metzger, who has been living and working in Switzerland for years, already won Saturday's race with his teammates Maro Engel, Luca Stolz and Adam Christodoulou, which also lasted over four hours.
The four drivers from Octane126 brought their Ferrari home in ninth place, just 100 seconds behind the winning team in a group of four battling for P6.
And another Swiss Ferrari winner
Nikolaj Rogivue, another Swiss, won on Saturday in a Ferrari. With two German partners, the man from Zurich with Swedish roots decided the SP9-Am class consisting of five GT3 sports cars in his favor. Team Hella Pagid - racing one had already won the non-professional class at the opening race on June 27. On Sunday, the team had to forgo the start after Rogivue had an accident in qualifying.
Rahel Frey, who finished fourth in this class the day before with two German privateer drivers in an Audi R8, came in second on Sunday. Roberto Pampanini and Mauro Calamia also finished second in the V5 production car class, which consists entirely of Porsche Caymans.
The only other Swiss class win came from Hofor Racing by Bonk Motorsport with the BMW M4 in the SP10 GT4 class.
VLN Race Saturday Overall standings VLN Race Saturday Class Ranking VLN race Sunday overall standings VLN Race Sunday Class Ranking
