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#5 OPC Team Phoenix Opel Astra V8 Coupe: Manuel Reuter, Timo Scheider, Marcel Tiemann
Prime
Nostalgia

How a DTM failure became an unlikely Nurburgring 24h winner

Opel's fortunes in the DTM had taken a turn for the worst by 2003 - hardly the pedigree that suggested it could take on the toughest 24-hour race of them all. But that's exactly what it did…

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"When the idea came up to do it with a DTM car, it was like a silence in the room," remembers Timo Scheider. "It was like, 'Are you serious?' We were thinking, 'That will be a challenge.' In the beginning there was a feeling of, 'Let's try it. If we quit after three laps, we quit after three laps.' It was a bit like this."

"Everybody was laughing because to get a DTM car reliable for 24 hours at the Nordschleife, it's a big project!" adds Manuel Reuter. "But in the end, we showed it was worth it."

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