MOTORSPORT: A 12-Ring success for Porsche

Porsche’s head of GT racing has called the marque’s 12th victory in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring “truly a race of the century”.

The field of 148 cars didn’t race the full 24 hours on the ‘Green Hell’, the 25.378km Nordschleife circuit with more than 70 corners in Germany’s Eifel mountains, because of heavy fog that descended on top of heavy rain.

The 46th running of the GT classic, watched by a crowd said to have been 210,000, was red-flagged for a couple of hours mid-Sunday, erasing a lead of almost five minutes that a Black Falcon team Mercedes-AMG GT3 had built up.

After racing resumed with about 90 minutes left Frenchman Fred Makowiecki in a Porsche 911 GT3 R made a bold move outside through turns one and two of what is known as the Grand Prix loop on Brit Adam Christodoulou in the Merc.

Contact between them half-spun the Merc and several minutes later it clipped a barrier.

That was enough for Makowiecki to establish a decisive break which at the end, with 135 laps completed, became a 26.413-second winning margin over Christodoulou.

It was Porsche’s first victory in the event since 2011 but the sixth for Manthey Racing, which is based near the circuit.

Another Manthey entry led early until Romain Dumas, the Frenchman who had won the event four times (and the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice), crashed after hitting oil.

The surviving Manthey car – which Makowiecki shared with French compatriot Patrick Pilet, Austrian Richard Lietz and Brit Nick Tandy (another Le Mans winner) – had a puncture on the opening lap but recovered to trade the lead with the top Merc before a three-minute, 32-second time penalty for speeding in a slow zone that would have put it out of contention but for the red-flag stoppage.

Makowiecki said the 911 had been “perfectly set up for dry and wet conditions, so we could push hard to the very end”.

Dr Drank-Steffen Walliser, Porsche’s vice-president of motorsport and GT cars, said the victory was a belated 75th birthday present for the company’s chairman, Dr Wolfgang Porsche.

“That was truly a race of the century, simply indescribable under the circumstances – with the rain, the red flag and that incredible final spurt (by Makowiecki),” Walliser said.

Porsche’s 911 GT3 R project manager Sebastian Golz was “simply speechless”.

“That was 24 hours of highs and lows. There were problems, we had to fight our way through the field, but we never stopped believing we could do it,” Golz said.

Makowiecki’s co-drivers were Austrian Richard Lietz, Frenchman Patrick Pilet and Brit Nick Tandy, a 24 Hours of Le Mans winner.

One of Christodoulou’s partners in the Merc was Monaca-based German ex-Supercar driver Maro Engel.

Another Black Falcon Merc was the only other car to complete 135 laps, while a third entry from that team was a lap down in fifth – behind an Aston Martin Vantage V12 Vantage.

That was that model Vantage’s best finish in the event and its last full-factory endurance race.

Australia’s Porsche ‘junior professional’ Matt Campbell shared a 911 GT3 R run by Frikadelli Racing that completed 132 laps to finish 11th – the third Porsche home.

“It was an awesome experience … extremely difficult,” Campbell said.

“It certainly lived up to expectations with the fog, heavy rain … it had everything.

“Our result could have been even better, but we just weren’t fast enough at the end.”

Campbell’s fellow Queenslanders Rob Thomson and Angus Chapel shared Porsche Cayman GT4s that finished 50th and 53rd.

Audi and BMW both received ‘Balance of Performance’ breaks before the race but ultimately that did not help them.

Audi’s challenge ended in the 19th hour when defending winner South African Kevin van der Linde lost control of an R8 LMS while running third. It rejoined two laps down in seventh and finished sixth.

The highest-placed BMW M6 was a customer entry in 13th.

‘Incredible’ success for Loeb in rallycross

Rallying’s greatest driver, France’s nine-time world champion Sebastien Loeb, is concentrating on rallycross these days and he’s just won the third round of this year’s World Rallycross Championship.

Loeb said his success in a Peugeot 209 WRX at Mettet in Belgium was “even more incredible” as he thought he was racing for second place behind Audi’s Swedish ace Mattias Ekstrom.

“In the last corner he went to the joker (lap) and I won,” Loeb said.

“It’s been a long time trying (since Loeb’s only previous World RX win in Latvia in 2016, when he was also doing touring cars as well as the Dakar Rally).

“It’s not easy – the battle is always really intense and the level [of competition] is really high, so it’s a nice achievement.”

Reigning World RX champion Johan Kristoffersson of Sweden almost rolled his Volkswagen Polo R on the first corner of the Mettet final but still leads after three rounds with 75 points to Loeb’s 66.

Norwegian Petter Solberg, a two-time World RX champion as well as a WRC champion, is third on 65 points and his PSRX Volkswagen outfit leads the team competition with 140 points – 15 more than Peugeot.

Pau-wow — new Tassie tiger wins in France

Tasmanian teenager Alex Peroni has won at the world’s oldest street event, the Pau Grand Prix in France – where the term grand prix was first used more than a century ago.

Peroni’s success came at a round of the Formula Renault Northern European Cup – the series Supercar driver Anton De Pasquale won in 2014.

Having missed out on pole position by 0.007 seconds, the 18-year-old Peroni pressured his 16-year-old Danish teammate Christian Lundgaard into a mistake to take victory.

Peroni’s next outing will be in a Formula Renault Eurocup race at the Monaco GP on the last weekend of this month.