Weekly Racing Roundup (8.20.18)

Black Falcon Gives Mercedes First VLN Win of Season

Mercedes-AMG scored its first VLN race win of the year on Saturday with Black Falcon coming out on top in the six-hour race at the Nürburgring.

Hubert Haupt, Adam Christodoulou, Manuel Metzger and Gabriele Piana finished almost two minutes clear after leading from pole.

ROWE Racing finished runner-up with its BMW M6 GT3 driven by Total 24 Hours of Spa winners Philipp Eng and Tom Blomqvist, ahead of Falken Motorsports’ similar car driven by Alexandre Imperatori and Stef Dusseldorp.

ROWE missed out on the win in the race, for which its parent company was title sponsor, after it picked up a puncture.

Manthey Racing gave Porsche’s new 911 GT3 R its second race appearance with Frederic Makowiecki, Lars Kern and Marco Seefried sharing driving duties.

RESULTS: VLN 5

Lamborghini, Porsche Crews Take GT Masters Wins

Grasser Racing Team and Precote Herberth Motorsport shared the spoils at Zandvoort in the weekend’s two ADAC GT Masters races.

Ezequiel Perez Companc and Marco Mapelli won Saturday’s 60-minute contest in their Grasser-run Lamborghini Huracan GT3 from pole.

However, their route to victory started in dramatic fashion when Perez Companc tipped teammate Mirko Bortolotti into the tire barriers on the opening lap.

The Argentinian continued out front as title hopeful Bortolotti retired on the spot, while the remaining Grasser car held its lead into the driver swaps.

Mapelli took over and preserved the gap to the No. 29 Land-Motorsport Audi R8 LMS GT3 driven by Kelvin and Sheldon van der Linde to claim a narrow 0.7-second victory.

In Sunday’s race, Robert Renauer and Mathieu Jaminet took a lights-to-flag win in their Herberth-run Porsche 911 GT3 R after coming back from a Friday practice crash.

They now sit second in the standings behind HTP Motorsport’s Maximilian Goetz and Markus Pommer who became the new championship leaders with sixth and fourth-place finishes in their Mercedes-AMG GT3.

Goetz and Pommer replaced Callaway Competition Corvette drivers Daniel Keilwitz and Marvin Kirchhoefer, who failed to score for the second straight weekend.

RESULTS: Race 1; Race 2

Jake Kilshaw and Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report