24 h Nürburgring: rollercoaster of emotions for Marcel Fässler and Nico Müller
LONG DISTANCE RACE Until a quarter of an hour before the end of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, the two Swiss Audi factory drivers were in the lead. As rain set in, a wrong decision by the team worked to their disadvantage. The tension in the Audi Sport Team WRT pit was visibly noticeable. After a sensor defect on the car of their brand colleagues from Land Motorsport who had been leading for a long time, [...]
The tension in the Audi Sport Team WRT pits was visibly noticeable. After a sensor defect on the car of their long-time leading brand colleagues from Land Motorsport, Nico Müller, Marcel Fässler, Robin Fjins and René Rast took the lead in their Audi R8 LMS. They had already held this position for a short time due to the different pit stop intervals.
Actually, nothing more could go wrong as the car with the two Swiss works drivers ran like clockwork from the start. The second car, on which Müller and Rast were joined by Frank Stippler and Frédéric Vervisch for double duty, fell victim on Saturday evening to an accident in which the Bernese driver was not at fault while lapping an overtaxed touring car driver.
With 20 minutes to go, incipient rain - and this after four days of midsummer temperatures - turned everything upside down on the 157th and penultimate lap of the leaders' race. As only part of the Nordschleife was affected by the brief thunderstorm, the team sent its driver René Rast on with hard dry tires instead of softer intermediates or straight away with rain tires after the last short refueling stop.
A wrong decision as the German slid around helplessly in the wet sections while his immediate and later pitted pursuers from Land Motorsport and Rowe Racing (BMW) had the presence of mind to use rain tires and overtook the leading Audi shortly before the end.
Instead of the first, long-awaited victory for Marcel Fässler and the second triumph after 2015 for Nico Müller, there was only third place, just 50.6 seconds behind the winners and 21 seconds behind the runners-up from BMW. Although this is also a good result, it meant a huge disappointment for the two Swiss professionals.
Three class wins for Swiss
The second-best Swiss was Alexandre Imperatori from Freiburg, who competes under a Chinese license and lives in Shanghai, in eighth position in a BMW M6 GT3. The better-placed Mercedes-AMG GT3 driven by Edoardo Mortara from Geneva fell victim to an accident in the final half hour.
Three Swiss teams came away with victories in one of the 21 classes. Lucerne's Yannick Mettler celebrated his first victory on the Nordschleife with three German partners in a BMW M235i Racing. The quartet led from the start and beat twelve competitors with identical cars. A great performance.
The Renault Clio IV entered by Stanco & Tanner Motorsport had only one opponent for this in the SP2T class. Sandro Rothenberger and Sarah Toniutti thus took the class win with two German partners.
In the SP6 class, Hofor Racing celebrated a double victory with its BMW M3s. The only purely Swiss team with Chantal Kroll, her father Michael Kroll and his brother Martin Kroll came second in the SP6 class behind their German customers with Roland Eggimann.
Willy Hüppi and Manuel Amweg/Frédéric Yerly were leading their classes for a while. Hüppi's Porsche retired in the 21st hour due to an accident, the Toyota GT86 of the two Aargauers with a technical defect.
