The first weekend of July brought quite a few celebrations for Audi Sport customer racing: Two dominant wins for the Audi R8 LMS in the Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS Sprint Cup at Misano, as well as two podiums in the DTM at Audi Sport’s home race at the Norisring headlined the GT3 successes. In addition, Audi Sport customers also consolidated their championship leads in Europe with the Audi R8 LMS GT2 and Audi RS 3 LMS, and the GT4 version of the Audi R8 LMS also took customers to podium results in Italy, Germany and Portugal.
Audi R8 LMS GT3
Unbeatable in Italy: Audi Sport drivers Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts put on a masterful display in the Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS Sprint Cup at the Misano circuit in Italy, the fourth race weekend of the Sprint Cup season. The reigning champions, driving an Audi R8 LMS for Vincent Vosse’s Belgian Team WRT outfit, took pole position for both of the weekend’s two one-hour races. In the opening heat, Weerts maintained the lead into the first corner and throughout his stint, before handing the Audi over to Vanthoor, who took the win with an advantage of over five seconds. Third place saw a close battle between two Audi R8 LMS entries: Team WRT’s Benjamin Goethe and Audi Sport driver Christopher Haase from Tresor by Car Collection. In the end, Goethe held off Haase to clinch third place overall and victory in the Silver class classification for himself and teammate Thomas Neubauer. On Sunday, the second heat saw Vanthoor leading the way once again. He was the last of the front-runners to dive into pitlane to hand over his car to his teammate. Weerts rejoined the proceedings as the leader and ultimately took the victory with a gap of over two seconds. This triumph marked a record-equaling 14th Sprint Cup race win for Dries Vanthoor, a record that he now shares with his brother Laurens. Third place on Sunday went to Tresor by Car Collection with Haase and teammate Simon Gachet. The Belgian duo of Vanthoor and Weerts now holds an 11.5-point advantage in the drivers’ standings with the Sprint Cup season finale set to take place in mid-September at Valencia in Spain, where they stand the chance to clinch their third successive Sprint Cup title. They are also currently leading the overall drivers’ standings by half a point – this classification is comprised of the Sprint and Endurance Cup rounds. Team WRT also leads the sprint and overall teams’ classifications.
Two trophies for Team ABT Sportsline: Following his first win of the season at the previous round at Imola in Italy, René Rast added two more trophies to his tally at the Norisring street circuit in Nuremberg, which marked the home DTM race for Audi Sport and also the halfway point on the calendar. In the opening heat of the season’s fourth race weekend, Kelvin van der Linde started from pole position in his Audi R8 LMS from Team ABT Sportsline, but fell back and retired during the incident-filled race that only saw 11 cars finishing from 27 starters. His teammate, Rast, moved forward from sixth to finish third. The three-time DTM champion repeated this result by again moving up from sixth on the grid to score third place in the second race on Sunday. With these results, Rast has moved himself forward from fifth to third in the drivers’ standings. He is the best-placed Audi driver and only ten points behind the leader, Lamborghini driver Mirko Bortolotti. In the manufacturers’ standings, Audi has now increased its lead even further with a 60-point advantage over the nearest competitor, Mercedes-AMG.
Runner-up at the coast: The B-Quik Absolute Racing team finished second overall in the opening race of the Thailand Super Series. On the fast street circuit in Bangsaen, where the series returned to for the first time in three years, the team locked out the front row for the first race of the season with two of its four Audi R8 LMS entries. Starting from pole, Akash Nandy dropped to fourth place and remained near the front before he handed the car over to Sandy Stuvik during their pit stop. Following a late-race safety car period, Stuvik put on an impressive charge during the closing minutes to move himself up to second place and challenged for victory against a Lamborghini from Vattana Motorsport on the final lap – narrowly missing out on the win by a mere 0.173 seconds.
