A truly hot battle with many casualties

The fourth round of the VLN Endurance Championship on Saturday was, as expected, an exhausting tour de force for all involved. Not only the already high material requirements in "green hell", but in particular the extreme temperatures demanded a great deal from man and machine. The Black Falcon Team TMD Friction, which began the race with five vehicles, also suffered several setbacks after a hitherto very successful year.

The first blow came on Friday morning, when the Porsche 991 Cup, which was second in the VLN Championship, had such a bad crash during a test drive that it could not be repaired by the start of the race. In order to further maintain his championship chances, "Gerwin", who also had to do without his team partner Manuel Metzger who had injured himself when he fell of his bike, swapped to a 991 Carrera (starting number 420) with Adam Christodoulou and Christian Schmitz in the V6 class of production cars. Despite a good performance in the race, the battle for points came to an end in round 11 when the vehicle crashed in the area of the short loop on the Grand Prix circuit and had to drop out of the race.

A glimmer of hope was provided in the V6 class by the Porsche 991 Carrera with the starting number 394 driven by Aurel Schoeller, Sören Spreng und Daniel Schwerfeld, which was in second place up until the last lap. After the best performance of the trio in this season, the 991 had an accident in the steep section only minutes before the finish line. Unfortunately there was no chance of continuing the race.

Like many other teams, Black Falcon also had to pay tribute to the extremely hot weather: The 991 GT3 BF in the SP7 class driven by Alexander Kolb, Vincent Kolb and Christian Schmitz with starting number 57 had to drop out during the first half of the race with an overheated engine.

Fortunately, there were also some success stories in the fourth VLN race of the season: As was the case at the third race two weeks before, the Porsche 997 Cup with starting number 600 and driven by Jürgen Bleul, Tobias Nell and Carsten Knechtges, was able to win the H4 class and category for the Black Falcon Team TMD Friction.

After almost two years of abstinence, Black Falcon also started in the category of production cars with up to 3 litres again. The team had last won the VLN Championship in 2011 with a vehicle of this class. In a newly built Porsche Cayman the drivers Carsten Palluth, Holger Spelsberg and Miguel Toril each gave their VLN debut in the Black Falcon team. With the starting number 460, the three newcomers in the Porsche 981 Cayman were able to secure a convincing second place in a total starter field of ten vehicles. A powerful start, which none of the parties probably would have expected in this manner.

“Of course we are not completely satisfied with the overall performance in the race," said team boss Alex Böhm after the race. “But an accumulation of race accidents is something to be reckoned with, particularly in such a race where the extreme conditions test the limits of man and machine. We have not experienced such heat with Black Falcon in ten years of VLN racing. Therefore, the heat-induced failure of one of our vehicles is more a challenge than an annoyance for us. We will learn from the situation and adapt our vehicles to such conditions. Fortunately we had some success in this race too – the results in the H4 and V5 classes were a joy and motivation for the entire team. And at the fifth VLN round we’ll be back on all fronts again.“

So despite the rather mixed race results at the fifth VLN, the Black Falcon is raring to go again. After all, the next round in the battle for the championship will already continue in four weeks. Enough time to repair all damage and gather the necessary strength.

The TV station Sport 1 will show a summary of the fourth VLN run on 11.07.2015 at 12:35pm CET.