VLN: A good Saturday for the Swiss
FOUR IN THE TOP TEN At the second round of the Endurance Championship Nürburgring (VLN), no Swiss made it onto the overall winners' podium, but four managed a top 10 finish with GT3 cars. Outstanding in the other classes was Yannick Mettler with his first GT4 victory. The second VLN round was also the last before the 24-hour race on May 12/13 and the qualifying race next weekend. [...]
The second VLN round was also the last before the 24-hour race on May 12/13 and the qualifying race next weekend. The field was correspondingly strong with 179 teams, including 21 in the premier GT3-Pro class alone with a total of six Swiss drivers at the wheel.
Marcel Fässler finished his first endurance race of 2018 in Europe (after the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring with Corvette) in fourth place. For the driver from Schwyz, this was the first start with the Audi R8 LMS from Land Motorsport and South African Sheldon van der Linde as his partner. Their gap to the winners Krohn/De Philippi in Rowe Racing's BMW M6 GT3 was just 19 seconds, missing the podium by 6.3 seconds.
Nico Müller, who finished second overall with the Mücke Motorsport Audi two weeks ago, drove for Team Phoenix this time. Starting from P17, he handed over the R8 in P8 to Frank Stippler, who brought it home in sixth position. As already alluded to in the VLN1 report, the professional teams don't reveal their cards until the 24-hour race.
With Edoardo Mortara (Mercedes) and Jonathan Hirschi (BMW), two more Swiss drivers finished in the top ten, which to our knowledge has never happened before at a VLN race. Hirschi's private team (Walkenhorst) also turned the fastest race lap. Simon Trummer finished 14th in another Audi and Alexandre Imperatori retired with the BMW from Falken Motorsport.
First VLN class win for Yannick Mettler
Two cars with a Swiss line-up were flagged off as class winners after the four hours in beautiful spring weather. In the SP10 class, Sorg Motorsport's BMW M4 GT4 with Yannick Mettler was second on the grid. After a good hour and a half, the Lucerne native took the lead and gradually extended it over the next hour.
His German partner Heiko Eichenberg defended this after taking over, thus securing the Swiss driver's first ever VLN class win. Last year, he missed this by just seven thousandths of a second as a soloist in a BMW M235i, but took the class win in the 24-hour race instead.
Only four touring cars started in the SP6 class, two of which saw the finish. Both BMW M3s that came over the distance (one GTR and one CSL) featured the same Swiss crew: Chantal Kroll, her father Michael and her uncle Martin Kroll thus came to a double victory right away with Roland Eggimann.
As AutoSprintCH reported last week, Manuel Amweg made his first start for Team Milltek in an SP3 class Toyota GT86. Chris Chadwick (GB) soon took the lead from third place on the grid and continuously extended it over the first three laps.
Problems with the car's stability required several pit stops after that. Since everyone except the class winners had their problems, the newly formed duo still managed to finish second, three laps down.
As in the opening race, Ruedi Rhyn also celebrated a second place in the TCR class on an Opel Astra. Kris Richard, otherwise also racing in TCR, completed a Nürburgring practice session (to obtain Permit A) in a BMW 325i from the strongly contested production car class V4 and took fourth place with Stefan Kerkemeier and a British colleague.
