By Tarek Ramchani
Spa-Francorchamps hosted the first of two ADAC GT Masters races today. The Audi squad were able to improve after very hard qualifying sessions yesterday. Two Audi R8 LMS ultra cars from Prosperia C.Abt Racing performed well and made it into the top 10.
The #27 R8 LMS ultra shared by Audi regulars Christopher Mies and René Rast finished in a solid fifth at the end of the 1-hour sprint race. Mies and Rast started way back from eleventh place on the gird. The sister #26 Audi of Rahel Frey and Markus Winkelhock finished right behind them in sixth place. Not bad considering that the Audi cars are now a little bit penalized with the Balance of Performance. The drivers have to push to the limits to fight for the top spots.
The other Audi entries were outside of the top 10. Eleventh was the #1 car from MS Racing (Sebastian Asch/Florian Stoll), sixteenth the #28 Prosperia C. Abt Racing (Christer Jöns /Christian Mamerow), seventeenth the #16 YACO Racing (Philip Geipel/Dino Lunardi) and twentieth the #100 MS Racing (Daniel Dobitsch/Aditya Patel).
Race victory went the #14 Ford GT from Lambda Performance, driven by Frank Kechele and Nicolas Verdonck, the car started from pole position. #10 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 of Polarweiss Racing was second with drivers Maximilian Buhk and Maximilian Götz. In third the #12 BMW Z4 GT3 of DB Motorsport in the hands of Jeroen den Boer and Simon Knap. The race 1 results are here.
Race 2 is set for tomorrow, fingers crossed for all three Audi teams and their drivers.
Photos credit: ADAC GT Masters
