* Opel wins Nurburgring 24 Hours
* First official pictures of the comming MB SLR - last page


Opel has won the prestigious Nurburgring 24 Hours, run around the famous 14-mile Nordschleife in front of almost 200,000 spectators, scoring a famous victory over strong opposition from factory teams of Audi and BMW.

The 500bhp Opel Astra V8 Coupe of Manuel Reuter, Timo Scheider, Marcel Tiemann and Volker Strycek won the classic round-the-clock endurance event after a tough battle that raged between them and Abt Sportsline Audi of Karl Wendlinger, Christian Abt, Kris Nissen and Marco Werner. Audi led the race for a couple of hours, Opel for about half of the race. It was Opel's maiden factory-backed attempt at the race and the first time that a new-style DTM car has won the event.

Faultless reliability, mixed with a strong race pace, was always going to be the key to success, and the victorious OPC Team Phoenix Astra ran with barely a problem. The only concern occurred early on Sunday morning, when Strycek briefly went off the road, during which a stone split the alternator belt. The Phoenix mechanics sprung into action and only 15 minutes were lost replacing the component, time regained by some spirited driving which included an amazingly fast lap time of 9m04.446s by Tiemann.

Reuter completed the race to win by 5 laps over the Audi, with the Manthey Racing Porsche in third position another lap down.

"The car ran perfectly," said Strycek, who is also Opel's motorsport director and a former DTM champion. "Everything had to be right to win this race, and it's a very special feeling to do it. We put a lot of effort into the project and did a lot of long distance testing with this car.

"We had a situation after 16 hours where we were just four-tenths of a second behind the Audi, so our strategy was to push," he added. "When the Audi had its first electric problem with four hours to go, it meant we could reduce our pace. A lot of people said the DTM cars would not last the night, so we are pleased to have proved them wrong."