The endurance race at the world’s most demanding track ended with a great team performance by ROWE RACING. The privateer team from Worms in Germany that had entered two SLS AMG GT3s secured third place overall in a high-class 24-hour race at the Nürburgring and repeated its success from the previous year. The sister car was involved in an accident while in seventh place after 23 hours of racing and didn’t make it to the finish in the season highlight.

Like last year, ROWE RACING’s podium finish was achieved by the gullwing with starting number 22, driven by Christian Hohenadel (Illingen, Germany), Nico Bastian (Frankfurt, Germany), Maro Engel (Monaco) and Michael Zehe (Flörsheim-Dalsheim, Germany). The quartet that had started the race from 13th place on the grid showed a commanding performance from the action-packed opening stages of the race all the way to the finish. During the night, the gullwing took its first turn in the lead of the 165 cars strong field. After a time penalty, the SLS AMG GT3 was just behind the podium positions for a long time. With two hours remaining in the 24-hour race, the team benefited from a technical failure of a rival car and inherited third place without a battle. Two laps down on the winners, final driver Maro Engel secured ROWE RACING’s podium finish after 157 laps.

ROWE RACING’s sister car with starting number 23 also showed a strong performance, but the quartet with Thomas Jäger (Munich, Germany), Richard Göransson (Örebro, Sweden), Klaus Graf (Dornhan, Germany) and Jan Seyffarth (Querfurt, Germany) wasn’t rewarded for its stamina. After an accident on the third lap already, the number 23 car had to catch up from the back of the field. The spirited recovery brought the quartet back up into seventh place. A little more than two hours before the end, the gullwing was involved in an accident once again. The car still made it back to the pits, but the team quickly realised that the damage prevented a continuation of the race.

ROWE RACING team principal, Hans-Peter Naundorf: “First of all, congratulations to Phoenix Racing for a well-deserved victory and to our fellow Mercedes-Benz team Black Falcon for their second place. This was a really intense 24-hour race that we and the other top teams took on like a sprint race from the very beginning. We were able to prove our high potential with both cars and we are really happy with this podium finish, even though we could have done even better, had it not been for the bad luck of the number 23 car. My thanks to the entire team that has done a great job!”