Friday 19th April 2013

Pic Of The Week: racing at the 'ring

The sun is out, the snow has gone and racing cars are back at the 'ring!

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Last week’s Silverstone 6-Hour wasn’t the first opening round of an endurance championship to be taking place. Over in Rheinland-Pfalz, the VLN – the Nurburgring’s own sportscar racing series – was just getting underway, too. It came after a long weather- and penis-enforced hiatus for the ‘ring, that also prompted a flurry of testing activity this week that saw a series of Lamborghinis, BMWs and even a Subaru among others take to the hallowed tarmac in various levels of disguise. Not to mention, of course, the reinstatement of the Touristenfahrten, at long last.

But on Sunday, the racers had the Green Hell to themselves, and the entry list was long and comprehensive. The SP9 class, featured here and consisting of GT3-spec cars, could also lay claim to a smattering of well-known names, not least Dirk and Jorg Muller who, together with Brazilian co-driver Augusto Farfus, went on to win the race. Sadly, the Porsche 911 GT3 R seen leading in this shot, which could count Sabine Schmitz among its driver roster, failed to finish after a collision with a backmarker on lap 19.

It’s a welcome return for racing at the ‘ring, then, and it’s got us all excited about the prospect of the Nurburgring 24-Hour next month. We’ll be there – will you?

Traditional (4:3)
Computer widescreen (16:10)
TV widescreen (16:9)
Portrait (smartphone, etc)

[Image: Frozenspeed]

[UltimaCH]

Great to see the Ring alive after the miserable weather and other paint related objects...!

[soad]

Porsche looks good, stands out nicely.

[P4ROT]

Is it just me or does the rear of the 991 rsr seem incredibly wide? (not that I'm complaining!)

[cpufreak]

P4ROT said:

Is it just me or does the rear of the 991 rsr seem incredibly wide? (not that I'm complaining!)

that's a 997, and an "R" not RSR.

[PascalBuyens]

UltimaCH said:

Great to see the Ring alive after the miserable weather and other paint related objects...!

Yeah... and great to see they don't inform people on the website until the day itself that they have planned the VLN race... Nice to see it, but wanted to drive the Ring myself :-)

[cpufreak]

PascalBuyens said:

Yeah... and great to see they don't inform people on the website until the day itself that they have planned the VLN race... Nice to see it, but wanted to drive the Ring myself :-)

er, what?

VLN calendar is published for the year:
http://www.vln.de

and Nürburgring have ALL the events of the year published on their calendar:

http://www.nuerburgring.de/events/motorsport-event...

[eastlmark]

PascalBuyens said:

Yeah... and great to see they don't inform people on the website until the day itself that they have planned the VLN race... Nice to see it, but wanted to drive the Ring myself :-)

What? the Ring used for racing on when they could have let you poodle around in an unsuitable family saloon instead? Thats disgusting.
I would just love to see a VLN race there. Proper cars, proper drivers, proper noise.

[Mr.Jimbo]

I was there, working on the Jag XF24, and unfortunately an early bath for us (first lap incident saw the car undriveable after a clio collided with us...)

But it meant I got to watch a bit of it for a change, superb seeing the works cars fly around the nordschliefe, the closing speeds are mental!