Monday, May 17, 2010

ADAC 24 Hours of Nurburgring 2010 - BMW and Ferrari win, Porsche and Audi suffer

This year's 24 hours of Nurburgring showed as always a very diverse starting grid. A highlight was the Porsche 911 Hybrid racer that almost won the race, but retired after 20 hours or so. As some of the Audi R8 LMS also suffered from various problems the victory was with BMW and its M3 GT2 car no 25. Second came in the Ferrari 430 GTC as a surprise, it was the first start of the 430 at the 24 hours of Nurburgring. A couple of Audi R8, Porsche GT3 and BMW (M3, Z4 GT3) completed the first eleven. Twelfth was the Nissan Z33 with nine laps behind the winner. And thirteenth was a Porsche GT3 RS, a street legal car, impressive! 16th was the Volkswagen Scirocco GT 24-CNG (-80% CO2), 18th the Lexus LF-A, 19th the Opel Astra OPC, 27th the first Aston Martin Vantage V8, 30st a Honda S2000. Interesting also the car coming in as 34st, it was a four door Aston Martin Rapide, driven by the Aston CEO Ulrich Bez and a couple of other chaps. The Lotus Exige burnt down in the morning, but the Ginetta G50 GT4 arrived after 112 laps, noting that the winner finished 154 laps. Average lap times of the front running cars were between 8:30 and 9:00 for the 25.378 km long track (Nordschleife and Grand Prix course coupled). As always there were hundred thousands of fans around the track making this event to a week long party. It's a unique race and probably one of the largest racing events overall on a worldwide scale, no wonder that so many prominent drivers join the race every year.

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