BLACK FALCON with great team performance at 24h qualifying race

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Meuspath/Nürburgring. At the qualifying for the 24 hour race at the Nürburgring, BLACK FALCON was able to celebrate several achievements at once. The AMG-Team BLACK FALCON managed to qualify both Mercedes-AMG GT3 cars for the Top-30-Qualifying, while BLACK FALCON Team TMD Friction could celebrate three places on the podium.

Throughout the two-day qualifying-event for the ADAC Zurich 24h Race in May, there were adverse weather conditions. As the participants could not drive one single dry lap on saturday evening´s first qualifying session, the teams focussed on the second one-hour qualifying on sunday morning.

While the track was finally drying, the number 4 Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Schneider/Engel/Metzger/Christodoulou) qualified in fourth place. The day before, this car set the best time in wet conditions. The sister car number 9 (Al Faisal/Haupt/Bastian/Buurman) started from 7th place into the race. Because of the top-10 finish in the qualifying session, both cars will appear in the Top-30 qualifying in the context of the 24h race.

Two BLACK FALCON Team TMD Friction Porsche entered in class V6. During the qualifying the quartett of drivers in the Porsche Cayman (#351, Björn-Hansen/Vatne/Kolb/Kolb) assured the pole-position before their teammates in a Porsche 911 (#140,Schoeller/Kuhn/„Philip“). In the class of production cars up to 3 liters engine displacement (V5), the team used a Porsche Cayman (#148, Karg/Schlüter/„Sugar Mountain“/Böhm) and a long-known BMW Z4 (#147, Knechtges/Knechtges).

Since the qualifying was mainly influenced by the weather, a hailstorm took place in the region right after the start and caused chaos in the pitlane. Despite those conditions, Team BLACK FALCON decided to stay on slick tyres and gained a great advantage against their opponents who came in to change to rain tyres. Therefore both Mercedes-AMG GT3 commenced the race excellently and completed some laps leading the race, until the #4 relapsed because of a problem with the stationary petrol pump during refuling. At the end of the six-hour race, this vehicle finished in fifth place. The second AMG-Team BLACK FALCON Mercedes-AMG GT3 (#9) had to retire - in Top-10 position - from the race after an accident at Hohenrain-chikane half an hour before the end. The driver remained uninjured. The cause of the incident will be investigated together and the rebuilding of the car starts immediatly.

In class V6 the BLACK FALCON Team TMD Frictionn cars changed their positions during the course of the event. The Porsche 911 won the class in front of the Porsche Cayman that finished second. In class V5 Knechtges/Knechtges made it to the third rank and therefore saved the thrid podium for BLACK FALCON Team TMD Friction. The Porsche Cayman that started in class V5 aswell finished the race in fifth place.

"We´re happy with the race of our production cars", said team principal Alexander Böhm in hindsight of the BLACK FALCON Team TMD Friction."Also we managed to qualify for the Top-30-shootout with both Mercedes-AMG GT3. Unfortunately the AMG-Team BLACK FALCON GT wasn´t lucky enough to convert a good qualifying into great results. But we´ll be back in two weeks time to race at VLN´s second race of the season."

The next race for the AMG-Team BLACK FALCON takes place next weekend in Monza. At the start of the season of Blancpain Endurance Series, the team competes with two Mercedes-AMG GT3.