By Johan Laubscher
The Norwegian NBF GT Championship got underway at Våler this past weekend. This series has
seen a number of very interesting Audi cars in recent years, all of which were privately
entered. This season opener had another new and very special Audi car competing.
Three Audis were present at the event. The first two Audis also competed in the series last year. An Audi 80 driven by Eivind Nernes and the Audi A5 3.0 TDI driven by Per Støldal. The Audi A5 has also previously been test driven by Tom Kristensen at a Shell promotional event.
The third Audi at the event was an Audi R13. Jan Hroar Bjørklund drove the R13 and it is a great addition to the Norwegian series. This is the second Audi R13 to appear in competition this year, following the R13 which was acquired by Jose Antonio Lopez-Fombona for the Spanish Hillclimb Championship. More can be read about the Spanish R13 HERE.
The Norwegian season opener saw good results from Per Støldal in the Audi A5. He achieved second place (GT4 class) in race one followed by two more top five results. Jan Hroar Bjørklund, driving the R13, retired from the first race after sustaining damage and finished eighth in races two and three. The Audi 80 was not classified as a finisher in any of the three races on the day. The results can be seen HERE.
It is great to see these older and retired Audi race cars still competing outside of the DTM. The Audi R13 is the 2007 Audi A4 DTM (B7) car, the same version which took Mattias Ekström to the 2007 DTM driver’s title. These cars were seen in the DTM from 2007 until 2009, when they were last officially run by the Kolles DTM team. In recent years a number of older Audi A4 DTM cars have been run by private teams in many European series. These included the R11, R12 and R12 plus models, but the R13 was only seen again in 2012, when the Czech BRT team competed with a R13 in the Czech MMČR series. The two cars in Spain and Norway now add to the list of private R13 appearances. The Audi R14 and R14 plus (2008 & 2009 A4 DTM cars) are now the only modern Audi DTM cars which have not yet been acquired and raced privately.
More information:
Photo credit: RaceFoto.se / GT Racing - NBF GT Championship wesbite [Images linked]
