After a 9 and half hour stoppage the ADAC TOTAL 24H of Nurburgring restarted and Audi maintained their dominance at the head of the field throughout.
The heavy rain that had caused the stoppage had mostly subsided but the track was still damp and slippery and the ever constant Eiffel Mountain fog still hung over the circuit.
After a lap of the full circuit the race got underway under the safety car, the field got underway with the top three Audis staying line astern with the #1 Phoenix Racing of Frank Stippler car holding the lead.
The first non Audi at the start was Alexander Sims in the #99 ROWE Racing BMW in fourth place but he found the fast starting Sheldon van der Linde’s #42 Schnitzer BMW right on his tail on the restart.
This pressure allowed the three Audis to get away and build up a 2 second gap between third and fourth place at the end of the first lap, yet by Lap three the order of the top three had been reversed.
At the end of the first lap, the #29 Land Motorsport Audi of Rene Rast grabbed the race lead from #1 of Stippler at the first corner, who quickly lost second to the #3 Car Collection of Christopher Haase at the hairpin on the GP circuit and then set off in pursuit of the leader.
On the long Döttinger Höhe straight Haase got into the slipstream of Rast and pulled out to grab the lead and showed Rast a clean pair of heels.
Rast’s chase of the leader has severely hampered by having to serve a 32 second penalty in its pitstop for disrespecting yellow flags prior to the race stoppage.
On the second lap Maro Engel in the #6 HRT Team Mercedes managed to overtake both of the battling BMWs and set off in chase of the leading Audis.
Yet Engel’s chase was ruined when a wheel came off on his car just before the entry to the Nordschelife, forcing an emergency trip to the pits and a deleted GP lap which dropped him to 16th place.
The Audi 1-2-3 was ended by Dennis Olsen in the #18 KCMG Porsche as he got his way past Stippler to grab third place.
Third became second when Rast’s penalty allowed the Porsche up into second place.
While the #101 Walkenhorst BMW held the lead at the 18th hour mark, it was behind on pitstops with Haase still retaining the effective race lead on pitstops.
