By Tarek Ramchani
The world famous Indianapolis Motors Speedway will host the eighth round of the Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series next week.The Indianapolis meeting, known as the Brickyard Grand Prix, will be a three-hour race supporting the NASCAR Sprint Cup and held on the road course.
The event itself is part of the special North American Endurance Championship. It will be the third and final race of this championship within the main Rolex Series. Audi will be represented by two R8 GRAND-AM cars from two different teams.
The #24 car is a full factory effort under the name of Audi Sport customer racing. The car will be shared by two Audi works drivers, Edoardo Mortata and Filipe Albuquerque, both of them racing in the DTM with Audi Sport Team Rosberg. The car will be directly supervised by quattro GmbH and Kettler Motor Werks. Audi Sport customer racing is currently third in the team's standings of the NAEC with 22 points. Both Edoardo Mortata and Filipe Albuquerque are fourth overall in the driver's standings with 22 points. At Indy Audi will fight hard to achieve a GT class victory after the main Daytona 24 Hours earlier this year, as well as trying to win the North American Endurance Championship.
The second Audi R8 GRAND-AM entry is a privateer effort from Fall-Line Motorsports. The customer team debuted with the car at Watkins Glen, with some positive performances, including leading the race. At Indianapolis their #46 Audi will be shared by drivers Al Carter, Charles Espenlaub and Brett Sandberg. At the Glen the three drivers finished twenty-seventh overall and fourteenth within the GT class. At Indy the Fall Line Motorsports team will try to learn more with the car and improve further.
Photo credit: Audi of America
