Endurance

24H Nurburgring: Hour 19 update

News and quotes 09.00 to 11.00hrs The saga continues: the battle for the lead in the hours 17 to 19 remained just as thrilling as it had been throughout the race. 22 times the lead has changed, now, and currently, the Phoenix-Racing Audi R8 LMS ( ...

Published: Jun 19, 2009, 7:56 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

News and quotes 09.00 to 11.00hrs

The saga continues: the battle for the lead in the hours 17 to 19 remained just as thrilling as it had been throughout the race. 22 times the lead has changed, now, and currently, the Phoenix-Racing Audi R8 LMS (#99) is back in the lead, with Manthey-Racing's Porsche 911 GT3-RSR following in second. In the past two hours, Timo Bernhard, Marc Lieb, Romain Dumas and Marcel Tiemann succeeded in reducing the lead of the Audi by six to eight seconds per lap. Meanwhile, the second Manthey-Porsche (#2) and the Abt-Audi (#97) also continued on the same lap as the two leading cars, with five more hours to go. While fifth and sixth positions still were held by the Porsches of Mamerow (#19) and Alzen (#18). The Volkswagen works squad, however, had to cope with a retirement. In the Pflanzgarten section, Wolfgang Kaufmann (#17) crashed into the rear of Kristian Nagele's BMW 330i (#80) and due to the incident, the race came to a sudden end for both cars. At the same time, the VW Scirocco #118 keeps on delivering in great style. At 11:00hrs. Jimmy Johansson, Florian Gruber, Nicki Thiim and Martin Karlhofer held the great 13th position in the overall standings.

# 1 (Bernhard / Lieb / Dumas / Tiemann) Porsche 911 GT3-RSR
9:39hrs: No driver swap, Marc Lieb goes out for a second consecutive stint.
10:50hrs: Driver swap at Manthey racing. Now, Timo Bernhard enters the cockpit of the Porsche 911 GT3-RSR to replace Marc Lieb. Marc Lieb: "The double-stint was really tough. "We have to push extremely hard to match their pace. On the other hand we lose a lot of time whenever we come in for a refuelling stop. That's truly frustrating. But our motto is: Now more than ever!"

# 18 (Alzen / Bert / Arnold / Mies) Porsche 997 GT3 Cup
Uwe Alzen: "All our drivers proved to be truly disciplined. Everything is running smoothly. For us, finishing the race is of major importance. I know that there still is a long way to go but we absolutely want to secure a top-ten finish. The Mamerow-Porsche is fractions faster than our's, therefore, we won't be able to beat them, under normal circumstances."

# 19 (Mamerow / Bergmeister / Franchitti / Mamerow) Porsche 911 GT3 Cup S
9:59hrs: Chris Mamerow takes over from Marino Franchitti. Franchitti: "Despite the numerous yellow-flag periods during my stint we succeeded in extending our lead over the Alzen-Porsche. Now, in my third stint, I felt really good in the car."

# 97 (Abt / Hemroulle / Kaffer / Luhr) Audi R8 LMS
Pierre Kaffer: "We've set ourselves the goal to make it to the podium and to realise this goal, we have to push as hard as possible, now. In the opening stages we may have opted for a too conservative approach and therefore lost too much ground compared to the front-runners. Our car has been running trouble-free, so far."

# 99 (Basseng / Fassler / Rockenfeller / Stippler) Audi R8 LMS
9:20hrs: The R8 comes in for a scheduled pit stop. Frank Stippler. "Marc will remain in the cockpit. We will do double stints, from now on."

# 117 (Sainz / Simon / Depping / Kaufmann) VW Scirocco
Wolfgang Kaufmann: "Quite obviously, I'm extremely disappointed. I went over the blind crest in the Pflanzgarten section at 200kph -- and all of a sudden I saw another car (#80) standing on the track. I tried my best to decelerate and avoid hitting it but I had no chance at all. The impact was hard but I'm okay - more or less. I'm really sorry for our crew as they did a perfect job and would have deserved a good result."

-credit: adac.24h

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article 24H Nurburgring: Audi morning update

Next article 24H Nurburgring: Hour 23 update

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Manthey acknowledges IMSA to be "tougher than expected" despite two wins

IMSA

IMSA IMSA 9 h

Manthey acknowledges IMSA to be "tougher than expected" despite two wins

How a philosophy shift brought BMW to new heights in 2026

IMSA

IMSA IMSA 9 h

How a philosophy shift brought BMW to new heights in 2026

Fred Vasseur reveals two costly moments that denied Ferrari US GP double podium

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

United States GP

9 h

Fred Vasseur reveals two costly moments that denied Ferrari US GP double podium

Cleetus McFarland set to compete full-time for 2027 ARCA championship

ARCA

ARCA ARCA 11 h

Cleetus McFarland set to compete full-time for 2027 ARCA championship

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts