Nürburgring: Fässler narrowly misses the podium
PENALTY DENIED 3rd place The Audi R8 with Marcel Fässler was on course for the podium in the final phase of the Nürburgring 24 Hours. A late refueling stop including a time penalty threw the team back one position. Three Swiss drivers took class victories. Marcel Fässler's Nürburgring entry began with disappointment. After second fastest time in the first qualifying session and eighth in combined qualifying, [...]
Marcel Fässler's Nürburgring race started with disappointment. After setting the second-best time in the first qualifying session and eighth in the combined qualifying, he only managed 29th place on the grid in the top-30 time trial due to electronics problems on the Audi R8 LMS from Team Car Collection. Together with his three German team partners Markus Winkelhock, René Rast and Christopher Haase, all of whom had already won this race, the driver from Schwyz set off on an impressive race to catch up from 3:30 p.m. on Saturday.
In a race marked by numerous accidents, retirements of top teams and time penalties for offenses under yellow, they advanced to third overall in the penultimate hour. Unfortunately, Fässler's team also had to serve a late time penalty, so third place on the podium was ultimately lost by just 2 minutes and 15 seconds. In 2011 and 2017, Marcel Fässler finished the Nürburgring Marathon in third place overall, in 2012 and 2013 in fifth place and now for the first time in fourth place, always with an Audi GT3 sports car.
Marcel Fässler: "If you look where we came from, we have to be satisfied with what we achieved. It probably wouldn't have been enough for the very front, although I was ahead of Stippi once during the night, who then won. Because we still had to refuel briefly, it would probably have been close to finishing third even without the time penalty."
Penalty from Porsche's opponents gives Audi victory
Overall victory at the 47th staging of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, which took place in beautiful summer weather, went to Fässler's brand colleagues Pierre Kaffer, Frank Stippler, Dries Vanthoor and Frédéric Vervisch. After a flawless drive, the Audi R8 LMS from Phoenix Racing only took the lead for the first time on lap 142 of 157 completed laps on the 25.378-kilometer Nürburgring when the Porsche 911 RSR from Manthey Racing, which had been clearly leading for a long time, had to serve a steep time penalty.
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With Alexandre Imperatori in the BMW M6 GT3 from Falken Motorsport (6th) and Philip Ellis in a Mercedes-AMG GT3 (7th and P2 in the Pro-Am class), two more Swiss drivers made it into the top ten. Only 102 of 155 teams that started finished in classification.
Three Swiss class winners
In the various classes, three teams with Swiss crews took class victories. Yannick Mettler celebrated his third success in three years. This time, the Lucerne native won for the first time in the SP10 class of GT4 cars on a Mercedes-AMG from Black Falcon.
Rahel Frey won the SP8 class in an Audi R8 LMS for the Giti Tire Motorsport by RaceIng team. After several attempts, Ivan Jacoma, who has been successful in more than two dozen VLN races, finally managed a class win at the 24 Hours, for the head of Porsche Centro Lugano in a Cayman GT4 CS in the SP6 class. On another Cayman, Marco Timbal took a good second place in the V5 class.
We will come back to the performance of the various Swiss in the course of the week.
