During the fourth round of the 2014 VLN Championship and what was considered the final preparatory race for the highly anticipated 24 Hours of Nürburgring, Team Black Falcon showed its hand by scoring an outright victory at the Nürburgring Nordschleife.
The team entered two Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3s in the SP9 category. Lance David Armstrong, Andreas Simonsen and Christian Menzel drove the #3 car, while Abdulaziz Turki AlFaisal, Adam Christodolou and Yelmer Buurman shared the #9 Mercedes.
Team Black Falcon’s #3 Mercedes qualified on pole position after lapping the Nordschleife in 8 minutes 02.098 seconds, a full three seconds quicker than Frikadelli Racing Team’s Porsche 911 GT3 R, while the team’s #9 car settled for third place, just 0.1 off second place.
Both Black Falcon Mercedes were quick off the line on Sunday’s race start, thus keeping their respective positions. A combination of meticulous pit stops and blistering on-track pace meant that the two cars were in a position for a 1-2 as the race progressed. However, racing stopped with one hour to go due to a heavy accident that left too much debris on the Döttinger Höhe section of the track.
The #3 Black Falcon Mercedes was declared winner of the race following a dominant performance from pole, while the sister #9 car was deprived of second place, as cars ahead took advantage of the race stoppage to never pit again.
Team Black Falcon’s Porsches had another satisfying result, with the #56 911 GT3 Cup, shared between Willi Friedrichs, Burkard Kaiser and Andreas Ziegler, finishing 28th overall and 3rd in the SP7 class, while the #396 Porsche 911 Carrera of Ivan Jacoma, Manuel Metzger, Christian Schmitz ended up 62nd overall and 3rd in the V6 category.
The team now looks forward to the grueling 24 Hours of Nürburgring next month in which it hopes to emulate last year’s success and the dominant pace it showed during the fourth round of the VLN this past weekend.
