“The Nürburgring 24 Hours is a perfect match for the philosophy behind MICHELIN’s commitment to motorsport,” says MICHELIN Competition’s director Nick Shorrock who was in Germany for the race. “It’s a 24-hour race which genuinely highlights the durability and consistency of our products which not only had to withstand the different constraints of the technically challenging Nordschleife, but also had to cover the wide spectrum of weather conditions that were possible in the Eifel Mountains.

“On top of that, there was real competition between tyre manufacturers. Being able to compete head-on with other brands to showcase the quality of our tyres and carry over the technical solutions we employ for our road tyres has been a fundamental factor behind MICHELIN’s involvement in motorsport for more than a century.”

MICHELIN’s official partners in Germany were the Manthey Racing Porsches, the two Phoenix-run Audi R8 LMSs, the two Abt Sportsline Audi R8 LMSs and the two Raeder Motorsport Audi TT RSs. Other MICHELIN runners at the race included Mamerow Racing’s N°30 Mercedes Benz SLS AMG GT3 and the similar N°32 Heico Motorsport car.

The field also included a host of Porsche GT3s, Audi R8 LMSs (Race Experience), Mercedes SLSs (Black Falcon), BMW M3 GTs and Ferrari 458 Italias racing on the rubber of rival brands, and this variety enabled the role of tyres in the overall performance package to be understood more effectively.

The N°18 Porsche GT3 RSR (which, we recall, wasn’t supposed to have taken part, since Lieb/Luhr/Bernard/Dumas were also entered in the N°11 Porsche GT3 R) spent practically the entire race on medium-compound MICHELINs, even during the night when the temperatures were quite mild (15°C at 2:30am). It started the race on slicks despite the damp conditions and this enabled it to run a full opening stint of nine laps without having to stop to change tyres as the track dried.

The Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 turned out to be very competitive, notably the MICHELIN-equipped N°30 and N°32 cars. The N°30 car of Mamerow/Hahne/Kaffer topped the order on two occasions (after Lap 1 and at around 11pm Saturday), while the N°32 machine (Arnold/Margaritis/Brück/Frankenhout) ran in the provisional top-three from about midnight until forty minutes from the chequered flag. The two Audi R8 LMSs ran on medium-compound slicks during the day and on soft tyres at night, although they didn’t quite appear to be a match for the Manthey Porsche or the factory BMW M3. Even so, the N°14 Audi of Basseng/Fassler/Piccini/Stippler finished on the podium.

MICHELIN will be back endurance racing with its GT partners at next month’s Spa 24 Hours (July 30-31).

Audi, Mercedes Benz, Michelin, Nürburgring 24 Hours 2011, Porsche