The successful performances of the two Peugeot RCZ 2.0 HDi FAP entered by the Peugeot RCZ Team Nokia in the VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring continue. Michael Bohrer, Stéphane Caillet and Jürgen Nett finished the third out of ten races of the season into second position in class VD1T. After six hours race duration, Cyrus Ayari, Jonathan Cochet, Olivier Perez and Alexandre Prémat took the chequered flag in fourth place and just missed to finish on the podium.
“Both cars again were running without any problem”, said a happy Michael Bohrer. “No work for our technical team, apart from refuelling and drivers changes, they had prepared the RCZ 2.0 HDi FAP once again perfectly.” Stéphane Caillet was enthusiastic about the new set-up of the rear axle: “We have increased the track and camber. In combination with the Kumho tyres, we thus gain a few seconds per lap.” Jürgen Nett was very much impressed by the maximised engine software: „We have a higher torque now when we accelerate out of the corners, this is a great help when overtaking.”
The lap times of clearly below ten minutes achieved in practice already indicated the potential of the two dynamic sports coupé race cars. Michael Bohrer in the white RCZ achieved a time of only 9:53.677 minutes whilst Alexandre Prémat was only almost 1.7 seconds slower. During the race, the ten minutes mark again was beaten several times. After their new successful result, Bohrer/ Caillet/ Nett move ahead into 24th position out of 834 participants shown in the championship classification and they are now fastest diesel-powered car in the currents standings.
207 RC \”VLN\”: Start-finish victory for the team Lenzen
Stephan Lenzen, Timo Frings and Juan Garcia Crespo of the team Lenzen celebrated an unchallenged start-finish victory in the special classification 207 RC and a second place in class SP3T. “I was really pushing hard right from the beginning, went into the lead and increased the gap constantly”, said start driver Timo Frings. “We did not have any problem at all, a perfect race.” Into fourth class position finished Dr. Joachim Steidel, Jens Rarbach and Rudolf Heußner in the Fleper-Peugeot 207 RC. Due to an off in the section on the short version of the circuit, the left side of the car was badly damaged and they lost the side window. The winners of the second championship round, A.R.E.D. Motorsport, had already suffered an accident in practice at the section Schwedenkreuz and damaged the rear part badly. Ralf Bettendorf, Ronny Tobler, Jürg Tobler and Leo Nutz nevertheless made it to start the race. In ninth lap then, the engine performance decreased so that after two and a half hours race time, the 207 RC had to be pushed back into the pits with a lambda sensor failure.
