21.08.2007 Nurminen flies at Nürburgring Racing driver Niko Nurminen continued his season last weekend at familiar Nürburgring Nordschleife which held four hour race of VLN Langstrecken Meisterschaft. Niko, who raced earlier this season in Seat Leon Supercopa one-make class, drove this time updated Seat in SP3T class which is for turbo charged cars. While Johann Wanger steps out from MS-Racing number one car to another, Niko shared his stints with fast Florian Stoll. Regulations of SP3T class are more unrestricted than in one-make class and top cars have more than 300 bhp. Seat Leon of MS-Racing were still pretty close of cup regulations due to delay of some engine parts. "In this race we simply can not fight against the most powerful cars, but everything can happen in such a long race like this" Niko spoke before the race. In morning's qualifying session the Finnish-German squad didn't show their best. Small electric problems caused some worries but there was a lot of action on the circuit as well. "The traffic and numerous yellow flags destroyed every lap which I had. Florian managed push a bit harder and we reached sixth place in the class" Niko says. Like in the last race, team set Niko for start. First couple of corners went fine without any big collision and while the massive group of cars turned to Nordschleife from GP circuit, Niko was improved his position. Since the very first laps Niko set impressive and especially equal lap times, even inside two tenths of a second in massive 25 kilometers lap! Niko's stint was initially planned to be 8 laps but suddenly it finished one lap earlier. MS-Racing's top car wormed slowly to pitlane with puncture and badly damaged front wheel. "Another Seat Leon crashed to me in overtaking situation, even I was in the outside line. That car spun in front of me and pushed my car against the armco. I'm happy I managed to continue from that incident" Niko explaines. During the pitstop team refueled car and Florian continued action packed race. Front runners of the competetive SP3T class were already too far, but stable drive and good laptimes through entire race finally gave nice 3rd place for Nurminen-Stoll pair in the class. In the overall race they finished 37th out of 200 cars. "Podium finish feels always good. Especially I'm satisfied for my lap times, I drive a bit faster than Florian who race much more than me with this car" Niko says. There is still four rounds remain in the VLN and Niko hopes that he can take part at least one of them with MS-Racing and Seat. << back to news