- Manthey Racing won for the fifth time in six years in the Nürburgring 24.
- Marc Lieb, Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Lucas Luhr were co-drivers of the winning car.
- Last year's winner, the Schnitzer Motorsport BMW team, finished 2nd.
NÜRBURG, Germany — Porsche returned to victory Sunday in the 39th edition of the Nürburgring 24, a twice-around-the-clock endurance race for GT sports cars.
Marc Lieb, Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Lucas Luhr were co-drivers of the winning 911 GT3 RSR. They finished 4 minutes, 23.7 seconds ahead of the BMW M3 GT that won last year's race, snapping the four-year stranglehold on the event by the Manthey team.
Bernhard won for the 5th time, putting him into a tie for most wins with Pedro Lamy and Marcel Tiemann.
Last year's winning drivers, Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus, Uwe Alzen and Pedro Lamy were at the wheel of the Schnitzer Motorsports entry again this year.
The Audi R8 LMS of Marc Basseng, Marcel Fässler, Andrea Piccini and Frank Stippler took 3rd place.
The victory was the 11th for Porsche. BMW has the most victories with 19. Ford models have won five times, Chrysler's Viper three and Opel one.
The winners set a race record by covering 156 laps around the 15-mile course combining the present grand prix circuit and the historic Nordschleife, or North Course, which winds through the Eifel Mountains.
They dominated the race, with only one tense moment during a visit to the pits.
"During a pit stop, the petrol pump didn't work," Luhr said. "Fuel simply didn't come out. So we had to push our car back to another pump and in doing so lost almost a minute."
Inside Line says: With five different manufacturers posting victories in the first five races of a series of Nürburgring races and with BMW interrupting the Manthey streak, the outcome of this race was in question. But the Porsche dominated. — David Green, Correspondent
Add A Comment »