Michelin

MICHELIN and PORSCHE return to their winning ways at the Nürburgring

The 39th edition of the Nürburgring 24 Hours was won by the MICHELIN-equipped N°18 Porsche GT3 RSR shared by Lieb/Luhr/Bernhard/Dumas. This legendary endurance race is immensely popular in Germany (250,000 spectators), and competition between carmakers and tyre manufacturers is traditionally extremely fierce.

After claiming six straight wins between 2004 and 2009, MICHELIN returned to the top of the podium this weekend at the infamous Nürburgring-Nordschleife (25.378km, 73 turns) which is notorious for being one of the world’s most challenging circuits.

The weather in the Eifel Mountains can be highly changeable at this time of year and this invariably makes tyre choices a delicate exercise. That was yet again the case throughout this year’s meeting which was marked by frequent showers from Thursday until Sunday morning. MICHELIN’s partners, who accounted for some 30 percent of the 200-strong field, used the entire range of endurance tyres which the French firm had available for the German race, from soft-compound slicks to full-rain tyres.

MICHELIN was the official partner of the Manthey Racing-run Porsches and six of the Audis (Abt Sportsline, Phoenix and Raeder Motorsport teams), not to mention a long list of experienced ‘privateer’ outfits.

“The track and weather conditions always make the Nürburgring a huge challenge, and there is always intense competition between tyre manufacturers, since the majority of the world’s top tyre makers are present in most of the classes. A win in the Nürburgring 24 Hours speaks volumes for the performance, versatility and consistency of a tyre because you often see identical cars competing on different brands,” notes Serge GRISIN, the manager of MICHELIN Competition’s four-wheel motorsport programmes.

The N°18 Porsche/MICHELIN eased into the lead on Sa turday evening, shortly before midnight. Marc Lieb, Lucas Luhr, Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas then concentrated on extending their cushion to take this afternoon’s chequered flag relatively comfortably clear of the N°1 BMW after establishing a new distance recor d for the race (156 laps/3,959km).

The MICHELIN-equipped N°14 Audi R8 LMS of (Basseng/ Fässler/Piccini/Stippler) rounded off the top-three ahead of the N°15 (Stippler/Henne rici/Haase/Winkelhock) and N°16 (Ekström/Scheider/Werner/Abt) sister cars.

MICHELIN was also a partner of the inaugural Porsche Carrera World Cup which attracted more than 100 drivers from 25 different countries to the Nürburgring for this historic race.

After securing its 20th victory at Le Mans earlier this month, MICHELIN notched up its second major 24-hour endurance race win in as many weeks.

Tags: Nürburgring 24 Hours, Porsche Carrera World Cup, Porsche GT3 RSR