VLN6 saw several milestones reached and passed on Saturday with Falken Motorsports scoring their first ever One-Two finish Klaus Bachler and Martin Ragginger took victory in their Porsche 911 GT3 R ahead of Stef Dusseldorp and Alexandre Imperatori in the team’s BMW M6 GT3.

Bachler took the lead ahead of pole sitter David Pittard in the BMW M6 GT3 of Walkenhorst Motorsport in the opening moments and by the second lap secured himself a place in the history books.

With a time of lap time of 7:56.259, the Austrian set a new VLN lap record. “That was quite a perfect lap”, said Bachler with a smile on his face. “Everything has to be perfect to achieve this. On the last metres, I was lucky that I managed to pass the slowest cars already at Döttinger Höhe whilst my rivals still had suffered with the traffic at Tiergarten.”

Apart from Dusseldorp and Imperatori in the sister Falken car, Sheldon van der Linde and Jeffrey Schmidt in the Land Audi R8 LMS were the only ones who were able to stand up to the performance of the Falken-Porsche.

But on lap 15, the Audi was out with a puncture and the BMW was secure in second spot:

“We would of course have been delighted to win the race”, said Dusseldorp. “And the team had allowed us to push to the maximum. But finally, the Porsche was simply faster. From the team’s perspective, the one-two win is the most important. And we are extremely pleased with our result.”

The overall win was one of nine class victories taken by Porsche cars and with that combined result another landmark was reached, the 1000th Porsche class win since 1990 in VLN competition!

That left the final podium position in the hands of Konrad Motorsport for the first time in 2018, the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 of Christopher Brück and Michele Di Martino finally delivering on the promise that the team has shown several times this season:

“At last, a result in the top three”, said Brück. “This could well have happened already in VLN race three, four or five. Unfortunately, we had a problem every time so that it is only today that we were able to score that deserved result.”

Di Martino added: “Third place feels like a victory for us and is the well-deserved reward for all the hard work both for us drivers and also for all the men around Franz Konrad.”

Behind the top three, Steve Jans, Marek Böckmann, Philip Hamprecht and Adam Osieka drove the fastest car in the GT3-Premium classification. The Porsche 911 GT3 R of the GIGASPEED Team GetSpeed Performance took the chequered flag fourth overall, “We changed our tyre partner at the sixth round and we are now much stronger over the race distance”, explained Jans: “The air is extremely thin in the leading group. But we have now established a solid basis on which to build. For sure, we want to score another top-three result during the current year in the overall classification.”

Team AutoArena Motorsport finished fifth with their Mercedes-AMG GT3, followed by the Frikadelli Racing Team (Porsche) and Walkenhorst Motorsport (BMW). Two teams in the colours of H&R-Spezialfedern scored positions eight and nine. Uwe Alzen Automotive provided the fastest car in class SP7 and Mühlner Motorsport the fastest Cup-2 vehicle. The top ten were completed by Ralf Schall who celebrated in class H4 at the same time his 101st class win, as usual in a team with Christopher Gerhard, in the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (997).

V4 for production cars up to 2,500 cc cylinder capacity (V4) which figured the greatest number of starters (18 cars) was also fa close battle. Marcel Manheller and Carsten Knechtges in the Manheller-BMW prevailed over Christopher Rink, Danny Brink and Philipp Leisen in the Pixum Team Adrenalin Motorsport Porsche by just 1.426 seconds.

With their sixth victory in the sixth race, Christian Kohlhaas and Stephan Köhler moved into the championship lead, the Ferrari duo taking the class win as the leaders coming into the race Norbert Fischer, Christian Konnerth and Daniel Zils had to retire their Pixum Team Adrenalin Motorsport Porsche Cayman after six laps.

In the class of VLN production cars up to 3,000 cc cylinder capacity (V5), the Team Care For Climate around rapper Smudo and former DTM driver Tom von Löwis celebrated a their first 2018 victory.

Håkon Schjærin, Atle Gulbrandsen and Kenneth Østvold celebrated their second successive victory in the TCR class with their Audi RS 3 LMS. Østvold marked his tenth class win, Formula 1 commentator Gulbrandsen his 14th and Schjærin his 23rd. The trio from the far North once again dominated over the crew of Andreas Gülden and Moriz Oestreich in the Seat Cupra TCR of mathilda racing. Into third position finished Benedikt Gentgen, Martin Pischinger and Lukas Thiele in another Seat entered by FEV Racing.

VLN7 takes place over four hours in three weeks time, this the 58th ADAC Reinoldus-Langstreckenrennen organised by the Dortmunder MC (22 September).