Weekly Racing Roundup (10.8.18)

Photo: VLN

Baumann, Assenheimer Score First VLN Win in Mercedes 1-2

Dominik Baumann and Patrick Assenheimer picked up their first VLN race win on Saturday leading a Mercedes-AMG 1-2 in the penultimate race of the season.

Driving the Team AutoArena Motorsport car, the pair completed 28 laps in the four-hour race and crossed the line just 3.651 seconds ahead of the Team SPS Automotive Performance car.

The runner-up Mercedes was piloted by Edoardo Mortara and Renger van der Zande who had led for much of the race.

The SPS drivers lost the lead when their final pit stop was found to have been 0.9 seconds quicker than the minimum time, forcing them to serve a 36-second time penalty.

Assenheimer’s first win came at his 56th VLN race, having made his series debut in 2011.

Third place went to Walkenhorst Motorsport with its No. 35 BMW M6 GT3 driven by Jonathan Hirschi, Jordan Tresson and Hunter Abbott.

RESULTS: VLN 8

Photo: Audi

New Audi, Aston Martin Make Race Debuts in VLN

Both Audi and Aston Martin’s new GT3 cars made their competitive race debuts in Saturday’s VLN race ahead of a full rollout in 2019.

They follow Porsche in using the Nürburgring-based series to debut their unhomologated GT3 cars after the new 911 GT3 R has run in VLN on multiple occasions.

The new Aston Martin Vantage GT3 finished fourth while Audi’s 2019-spec R8 LMS GT3 was classified fifth overall.

Running in the SPX class for unhomologated cars, they were both subject to penalties, such as a 20-second longer minimum pit stop time.

Darren Turner and Maxime Martin drove the Aston Martin while Christopher Haase and Jamie Green were at the wheel of the Car Collection Motorsport-entered Audi.

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.