This weekend will see Alex Fontana return to the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife. The Lugano-born driver will be making his return to the renowned “Green Hell” after a three-year absence: his last appearance was in fact in the Nürburgring 24 Hours, run in 2021 in which he secured a 5th place finish in the Pro-Am class. It will also be a return to the ADAC Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie (NLS) Endurance – previously known as the VLN Endurance – in which Fontana competed in three races between 2018 and 2019, in order to obtain the special Grade A Licence, allowing him to compete in the major categories on the Nordschleife, the historic 22-kilometre German track.
The fourth round of the 2024 NLS Endurance season is scheduled for the 3rd of August and the Swiss driver will be competing with the Car Collection Motorsport team in the ROWE 6H ADAC Ruhr-Pokal. Sharing the #33 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II in the Pro-Am class will be Klaus Koch, Florian Spengler and Johannes Stengel. Specifically, Koch and Spengler regularly drive the Ingolstadt car, while Stengel has been a Car Collection driver in the past. Alex Fontana, on the other hand, has been racing with the German team aboard the Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) for the 2024 season of the International GT Open, remaining in the “family”for this occasion, albeit in a different car.
After competing for years, this is the team from Walluf’s first time this season on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, all the more reason to bring home a good result from this gruelling endurance race at the Green Hell, in which the experience of Alex Fontana will play an important role in this important summer challenge.
Alex Fontana
“I am thrilled to be back racing on the legendary Nordschleife circuit and I would like to thank Car Collection for the opportunity. It’s a wonderful and unique track and is bound to be a really tough race. The key will be to find the right feeling with the car right from the start, without forgetting the unpredictable weather conditions. In some of my previous races, or rather non-races, we even faced snow and the cancellation of the race. That should not be the case this time, but even the long neutralisation due to fog during this year’s Nordschleife 24 Hours teaches us that there are so many external variables.”