– Comeback more than up to the mark: Ralf Aron set the fastest time in qualifying for the 6h-ADAC-Ruhr-Pokal race of the Nürburgring Endurance Series (NLS) at his first start after the serious accident at the Bathurst 12 Hour. The Estonian prevailed in the final showdown in qualifying in the Winward-Mercedes #80 (Stolz/Aron), which was fiercely contested. (NLS7 here in the livestream!)
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“I feel good in the car and really wanted to race this event. Yesterday we only made the seat adjustment and I no longer have any back pain. But the comeback is not complete yet, after all, we still have a 6-hour race to run. That was the first step, now comes the second,” says the Estonian.
Aron set the final best time of 7:51.506 minutes when the checkered flag was already out. He thus prevailed in the final showdown, in which the best time changed back and forth rapidly. Ultimately, he caught Frank Stippler in the HRT-Ford #64 (Stippler/Kolb; 2nd). (Result)
Shortly before, Stippler had replaced Jake Hill in the ERA-Mercedes #20 (Tilley/Christodoulou/Hill; 4th). The American team briefly looked like a completely surprising polesitter on debut, but the 2024 BTCC champion encountered traffic unfavorably on his last lap and could not improve further.
He also had to yield to David Jahn in the Gamota-BMW #23 (Zsigo/Kranz/Jahn/Fernandez Laser; 3rd), the fastest car in SP9 Pro-Am. The third row is shared by the Black-Falcon-Porsche #48 (Assenheimer/T. Müller/Pereira; 5th) and the Walkenhorst-Aston-Martin #35 (Krognes/Fetzer; 6th).
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There was a small drama around the latter when Dennis Fetzer had a minor accident in the Pflanzgarten area after teammate Christian Krognes had set an early best time, which was ultimately beaten five more times. Fetzer managed to bring the Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo back to the pits under its own power. By the end of the session, the Aston was already back on track.
The top 10 were completed by the PROsport-Mercedes #26 (Balcaen/Palette; 7th), the Schubert-BMW #77 (Klingmann/de Wilde/Tramnitz; 8th), the Car-Collection-Porsche #4 (Gorojan/Fontana/Menzel; 9th) and the Black-Falcon-Porsche #5 (Kaya/Piana/Stursberg; 10th) as the fastest car from SP9 Am. In total, 19 cars remained under the eight-minute mark.
Remarkably, there was not a single Code-60 phase during the entire qualifying; the Aston Martin accident was already the biggest drama in the 90-minute session. Only at the very last second did a BMW M240i Racing get stranded in the Metzgesfeld area.
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The race starts at 12 o’clock.
