6.6.2003
Opel wins Nurburgring 24 Hours

Opel has won the prestigious Nurburgring 24 Hours run around the famous 14-mile Nordschleife in front of almost 200,000 spectators, scoring a victory over strong opposition from Audi and BMW.

The 500bhp Opel Astra V8 Coupe of Manuel Reuter, Timo Scheider, Marcel Tiemann and Volker Strycek won the classic round-the-clock endurance event after a tough battle that raged between them and Abt Sportsline Audi of Karl Wendlinger, Christian Abt, Kris Nissen and Marco Werner. Audi led the race for a couple of hours, Opel for about half of the race. It was Opel's maiden factory-backed attempt at the race and the first time that a new-style DTM car has won the event.

Faultless reliability, mixed with a strong race pace, was always going to be the key to success, and the victorious OPC Team Phoenix Astra ran with barely a problem. The only concern occurred early on Sunday morning, when Strycek briefly went off the road, during which a stone split the alternator belt. The Phoenix mechanics sprung into action and only 15 minutes were lost replacing the component, time regained by some spirited driving which included an amazingly fast lap time of 9m04.446s by Tiemann.

Reuter completed the race to win by 5 laps over the Audi, with the Manthey Racing Porsche in third position another lap down.

For Opel and the four drivers it has been the first victory at the 24 hours Nurburgring while Phoenix Racing made its second win after 2000 when they did it with a Porsche.

In fact, both Opel Astras were running in the top three when the car of Peter Dumbreck, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Christian Menzel and Strycek was taken out of the race by a back marker. Bleekemolen was behind the wheel in third position at the time of the accident, which was caused by the Renault Clio. As Bleekemolen was passing the Clio it moved across the track and, despite Jeroen driving on to the grass to try and avoid it, he clipped the left-rear corner of the Astra and sent it spinning into the crash barriers at high speed.

The car of Dumbreck, Bleekemolen, Menzel and Strycek started from second spot, the Astra of Reuter, Scheider, Tiemann and Stycek from fourth place of the grid. A total of 210 cars competed in the race on the 25.947 kilometer combination of GP circuit and Nordschleife.

Following its tremendous success at the Nurburgring, Opel will now return its attention to the next round of the DTM at EuroSpeedway Lausitz on June 8.