VLN Round 5: preview

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After a summer of success in GT3 races around Europe in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup and at the Nürburgring 24 Hours, BLACK FALCON return to the premier SP9 class of the VLN championship this coming weekend, to take part in the longest race of the season: the annual six-hour marathon held at the Nürburgring. A solo Mercedes-AMG GT3 has been entered in this most challenging of national series, and BLACK FALCON’s AMG will be one of 15 top-line GT3s in a huge field of 173 entrants in VLN 5 spread across 27 classes of massively varying machinery. The team’s fleet of regular VLN entries is larger than ever for the season's highlight, comprising a trio of Mercedes-AMG GT4s and a quartet of Porsche, meaning the Black Falcon garages will be even more busy than normal.

The #6 AMG will be driven in the SP9 Pro class by four drivers who have vast experience around the twists and turns of the Nordschleife, and who all know what it takes to win there: Hubert Haupt (Germany), Adam Christodoulou (United Kingdom), Manuel Metzger (Germany) and Gabriele Piana (Italy).

In the SP10 class for GT4-specification cars, #162 will run with Carlos Gomez (USA), Peter Ludwig (USA) and Mustafa Mehmet Kaya (Turkey), who can also call on Gabriele Piana if required. The #164 AMG features Axel König (Germany) and Norbert Schneider (Germany) alongside two members of the Kolb family, Vincent and Alexander (Germany). BLACK FALCON are also supporting the #163 Black Falcon Team IDENTICA entry of Fidel Leib (Germany), Stefan Karg (Germany) and Moritz Oberheim (Germany).

The #57 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup MR II in SP7 will be driven by Jürgen Bleul (Germany), Manuel Metzger (Germany), Aurel Schoeller (Germany) and ‘Takis’ (Switzerland). A pair of Porsche 991 Carreras are entered in V6; the driver line-up for #395 is Alexander Akimenkov (Russia), Ronny Lethmate (Germany) and Vasilii Selivanov (Russia), while taking turns behind the wheel of #397 will be Christoph Hoffmann (Germany) and Uwe Lebens (Germany), who also have Fidel Leib (Germany) on their roster. Finally, the V5-class #448 Porsche Cayman will be driven by Martin Meenen (Germany), Christian Reiter (Germany), Johannes Stengel (Germany) and Michael Meadows (United Kingdom). 

The grid for VLN 5 will be set during a 90-minute Qualifying session starting at 08:30 CET on Saturday morning, August 18th, and the six-hour race will kick off at midday with the usual three-wave rolling starts. There will be full online coverage of the race available at vln.de/live, which includes detailed live timing and video streaming of the entire event. There will also be an English-language commentary of the race available at both the VLN site and at radiolemans.com. 

You can support Team BLACK FALCON across all social media platforms: follow the team via twitter.com/TeamBlackFalcon, facebook.com/teamblackfalcon/ and instagram.com/teamblackfalcon to get live action updates directly from the tracks, as well as fantastic images of the team in action.

RACE DATES

VLN 5: August 18th (ROWE 6 Stunden ADAC Ruhr-Pokal-Rennen)