Racing News

     

    Martin Tomczyk, Dirk Adorf, and Jens Klingmann took the BMW Team Schubert Z4 GT3 to a second-place finish in the four-hour VLN enduro on the Nordschleife at the Nürburgring in April. The race, regarded as an opportunity to tune up for the Nürburgring 24-hour race to be run in May, was won by Marcel Fässler and Frank Stippler in an Audi R8.
     
    Team Schubert’s second Z4, piloted by Dirk Müller and Augusto Farfus, finished eighth behind Uwe Alzen, Philipp Wlazik, and Alexandros Margaritis in another Z4 entered by Alzen’s team.

    The early part of the enduro was run in cold, rainy, and foggy conditions; the track dried over the course of the race.

    Schubert team manager Stefan Wendl said, “Conditions were really difficult and tricky today – even if you judge them by Eifel standards at this time of the year. That’s why it’s difficult to draw any conclusions with regard to the 24-hour race on the basis of today’s results. We used this race as a test and were able to try some different strategies with changeable conditions. Nevertheless, we are delighted with this strong result. This shows we are on the right path. Having said that, there’s obviously still a lot of work to do before the 24-hour race.”

    On the day before the race BMW Motorsport announced that Farfus and Tomczyk would run the DTM race at Brand’s Hatch on May 19 and then travel to Germany to run with Team Schubert in the Nürburgring 24-hour race. Even though they will not have qualified for the race, they will be eligible because they have competed in a VLN event at the Ring this season. They will shuttle to Germany immediately after the Brands Hatch race to drive the Z4s; this works because the 24 hour race runs on Sunday and Monday this year.—Brian S. Morgan