One of Black Falcon’s main players in its impressive 1-2 victory in the Rowe 6 Stunden ADAC Ruhr-Pokal was Adam Christodoulou, who with a rapid first double stint brought the car momentarily into the lead during a fierce fight with teammate Maro Engel. The Brit eventually finished second in the #16 Black Falcon Mercedes-AMG GT3 shared with Hubert Haupt and Luca Stolz.
Having won the VLN 6-hour race before in 2015 and 2018, Christodoulou said he’s slightly disappointed to not get the triple.
RACE REPORT | RACE RESULTS | INTERVIEW MARO ENGEL | INTERVIEW PATRICK ASSENHEIMER | INTERVIEW VINCENT KOLB
“We’ve won this race twice in the past and I was hoping to make it a third,” the Mercedes-AMG works driver said. “Qualifying didn’t quite go as planned and we ended up sixth, but it made the first two stints really enjoyable. I had a lot of fun going from sixth position to fighting for the lead, making it into the lead and being third at the end of the stint.
“All in all, it has been a brilliant day for AMG and Black Falcon – it can’t get much better than a 1-2. Of course, I would have preferred if it was the other way around with the two cars, but you can’t always get your own way and Maro and Patrick did a great job. They were fast all the way through and didn’t make any mistakes and were rewarded in the end with the win.
“We had a pretty clean race as well but had a little bit of unfortunate luck. The undercut we did should generally help to give you a clean track, but Luca sadly caught two Code 60s and lost quite a lot of time. No fault of his, it’s just sort of a gamble of how you are on track and where the Code 60s are. It’s just a bit of a shame really.
“Both cars were super quick today. We will be back soon to fix the result and win!”
After taking care of Frank Stippler and Fabian Schiller in respectively the Phoenix Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 and GetSpeed Performance Mercedes-AMG GT3 in one sweeping move, Adam Christodoulou went for slick tyres and began reeling in Nürburgring 24 Hours co-driver Engel.
“I was happy with that move and the pace on slicks,” Adam Christodoulou continued. “Maybe I took a little bit more risk to start with on the slicks, but it let me close the gap to Maro and had a great battle with him. It was nice the team allowed us to fight because of course sometimes there are team orders, but they didn’t say anything until we came into the pits!
“It’s very unusual because generally Maro and I are in the same car. I was happy to get into second and then try and put in some qualifying times. To race door to door was a lot of fun.
“It was strange getting out of the car: Normally you get out and you’re buzzing, and I see Maro and be like ‘Yeah good job!’ and all of that, but this time I was thinking I’d want to beat him! It was a different emotion when I stepped out of the car, but I think he enjoyed it as much as I did.
“I think we’ll be back together soon in one of the other VLNs. I’ve got a few clashes unfortunately so it might only be the final VLN I can come to, which is a bit of a shame because it’s the Nürburgring and who doesn’t love coming to the Nürburgring?!”
Please consider making a donation so we can keep bringing you our best content from the racetrack.
