Walkenhorst Motorsport with quintet at NLS2

Walkenhorst Motorsport is fielding five cars in the second round of the ADAC Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie – including three Aston Martin Vantage GT3. New Vantage GT4 celebrates premiere.

The second round of the ADAC Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, the ADAC Ruhrpott Trophy, will take place on 26 April. Walkenhorst Motorsport will be at the start with five cars. In addition to three Aston Martin Vantage GT3, the team from Melle will be fielding the new Aston Martin Vantage GT4 for the first time. A production-based Hyundai i30N completes the line-up.

‘After our important test outing at NLS1, we will now be at the start of the second race with full team strength. We are delighted that we will be starting our Pro programme, with which we are aiming for overall victory in the 24-hour race, and we are also looking forward to our first outing with the Aston Martin Vantage GT4,’ says team founder Henry Walkenhorst.

In the four-hour race, the team from Lower Saxony will enter one Aston Martin Vantage GT3 in each sub-class of the SP9. The two works drivers Christian Krognes and Mattia Drudi will start in the Pro class. For the team, this will be an important race for the planned attack on overall victory in the 24-hour race. In the SP9 Pro-Am, long-time WMS customer driver Anders Buchardt will compete together with Nico Hantke, who drove with the team in the ADAC GT Masters last year and will be racing a GT3 on the Nordschleife for the first time. Stefan Aust, Christian Bollrath and Jörg Breuer form a driver trio in the SP9 Am class.

In addition, Walkenhorst Motorsport will start for the first time with the Aston Martin Vantage GT4, which will face strong competition in the SP10 class for homologated GT4 cars. The Norwegian Niklas Abrahamsen, Brand Ambassador of Pirelli Norway, who joined the team as a regular driver this season, and Hermann Vortkamp, who has been successful in the RCN so far, will share the car. It will also be the first outing for the current Aston Martin Vantage GT4 in the ADAC Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie.

The team’s entry will be rounded off by the Hyundai i30N in the VT2 FWD class, which will once again be driven by well-known racing drivers to obtain the permit. Josh Hansen from the USA will make his second appearance in the Hyundai. Together with him, GT World Challenge Europe driver Oliver Söderström, who will obtain his Permit A in NLS2 and NLS3, and Tom Edgar, who has already raced the Hyundai in 2024, will drive the production-based touring car.

‘This will be a special race for me: I will be competing in a GT3 again for the first time since the 2023 24-hour race and also contesting a race with the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 for the first time – I’m really looking forward to it,’ says Managing Director Jörg Breuer full of anticipation. ‘This will also be a very important race for us as a team; we will line up with our full GT3 line-up and prepare for the 24-hour race in the best possible way. The first race outing of our new Aston Martin Vantage GT4 will also point the way forward.’

The race start of the ADAC Ruhrpott Trophy will take place on Saturday at 12:00 noon. The drivers will determine their starting positions in qualifying at 8.30 am. On Friday, the teams and drivers will have extensive test drives at their disposal. Fans can follow the racing action of the ADAC Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie around the legendary track as well as in the official live stream of the racing series on YouTube.