VLN 5. Run digital Nürburgring endurance series
02.06.2020
D he fastest car is - in spite of further BOP adjustments - the Mercedes still not. But Philip Ellis and Jack Sedgwick delivered a zero-error job in the halftime race of the digital VLN series and secured their first victory, Mercedes and the MANN-Filter Team HTP-Winward. 'We have had a lot of struggles the last few times, so the win now feels really good,' said Ellis, who also admitted: 'Without a doubt we benefited from the mistakes and problems of the competition today.'
Several system crashes
When it comes to pure speed, the competition from Audi and BMW were in front again. Team Williams eSports (Audi) stood out in particular, winning the second run. Sami-Matti Trogen was, like in his time, the absolute top of the field, drove confidently to pole and pulled the opponents up and away. But like some others on that day, Trogen's driving partner Dominik Staib experienced a crash in the simulation - just before he was supposed to get into the virtual car. Trogen drove on and exceeded the maximum driving time: the disqualification.
The sister team of the Mahle Racing Team (Agustín Canapino /Alex Arana) was after a collision with the BS + Competition BMW (Philipp Eng /Alexander Voß) and impact in the Hohenrain chicane early from the top fight. The Eng team received a stop-and-go penalty for the collision and actually ended up in fourth place - but, as in the fourth run, you didn't return to the pits on your own and were also disqualified.
BMW was pleased with the BMW Bank team (Bruno Spengler /Nils Koch) and the two Walkenhorst-Z4s (Mikkel Jensen /Christian Krognes and David Pittard /Sam Michaels /Scott Michaels) with second to fourth place. The best Audi from Raceunion (Florian Bodin /Marvin Otterbach) came in fifth.
Marius Golombeck and Patrick Kubinji just sat down in the SP3T by.
Thriller in SP3T
In the Cup 2 class there was with Martin Ascher and Marcus Jirak - son of the former VLN champion Walter Jirak - well-known winner. Only seven seconds separated the veterans from the second-placed Porsche 911 GT3 Cup of the Sim RC team (Claudius Wied /Simon Grossmann). The German SimRacing Cyan team (Keanu Buschmann /Till Norwig) completed the podium.
The Porsche Cayman Cup class (Cup 3) saw with CoRe SimRacing (Sindre Setsaas /Carl E. Jansson /Matti Sipilä) clear winners, who in the end brought the overall winners between themselves and the direct competition and thus even scored a lap ahead of Sorg Rennsport eSports (Christian Bug /Sascha Bürger) and Team RSO (Manuel Waibel /Nils Carstensen).
There was a real thriller about the victory in the SP3T class, where CoRe SimRacing (Marius Golombeck /Patrick Kubinji) only competed in the final slipstream duel and in the physical duel in the Hohenrain chicane in the last round against the SimRC team TCR (Jürgen Frank /Diogo C. Pinto /Felix Luding) was able to prevail for victory. The Heusinkveld team with Michael Schöttler, Marcel Tie and Max Riedmüller completed the podium in the class in which only the Audi RS 3 LMS start. The next DNLS run will take place on June 13th.
