Team Germany’s Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel sent the home crowds into delirium by winning their fifth consecutive ROC Nations Cup title in Düsseldorf.
Legends from all aspects of motorsport did battle for national pride in the ROC Nations Cup behind the wheel of vehicles including the Audi R8 LMS, Skoda Fabia Super 2000 and KTM X-Bow, on a purpose-built parallel track at the ESPRIT arena.
After a thrilling contest featuring the world’s top motorsport stars, Schumacher and Vettel prevailed in the final against Team Nordic’s Tom Kristensen and Juho Hänninen. The result means Team Germany extended their record of ROC Nations Cup titles to five.
But the two F1 world champions didn’t have things all their own way. Indeed, Team Germany only just made it past Team Great Britain (Jenson Button and Andy Priaulx) in the semi-finals after Button – conqueror of Schumacher in the first heat – spun out of the best-of-three decider against Vettel.
After the eventual victory a delighted Schumacher said: “It’s fantastic. I failed a bit in the semi-final and Sebastian sorted it out. Now we’ve done it again – number five! We’re really proud to have put our name on the trophy, but obviously even more proud to represent Germany again tomorrow and it would be great if one of us can win again.”
Vettel added: “It’s special to win five in a row, particularly at an event like this where a lot of things have to come together. The fans were really incredible tonight, giving us a boost every time we came into the stadium and crossed the line.”
Team Nordic defeated Team France (Sébastien Ogier and Romain Grosjean) by two heats to nil in the first semi-final.
Earlier in the evening, Team Nordic and Team France progressed through the round-robin Group A with four wins apiece to line up a best-of-three semi-final. Ogier and Kristensen both impressed with three wins out of three.
SAT1 Team Germany 2 (Timo Glock and Timo Scheider) missed out on a semi-final spot by just one point after taking three wins – two for Glock, one for Scheider. Team USA (Travis Pastrana and Brian Deegan) were eliminated with just Pastrana’s victory over Scheider to show for their efforts.
In the other group, Team Great Britain (Jenson Button and Andy Priaulx) defeated Team Germany (Sebastian Vettel & Michael Schumacher) by five wins to four after an amazing battle. Michael Schumacher suffered a surprise defeat to Vitaly Petrov in his first race of the night, but he made up for it by winning his other two heats including a tight win over Button. Then Priaulx briefly silenced the Düsseldorf crowd by beating Vettel in the final heat.
Team All Stars (David Coulthard and Filipe Albuquerque) were eliminated without any wins while Team Slavic (Vitaly Petrov and Jan Kopecký) also failed to progress despite Petrov’s fine wins over Schumacher and Coulthard.
But in the end the majority of the 33,968-strong crowd were sent home happy by Team Germany’s win.
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