Saturday, August 23, 2014

Blancpain Sprint Series: Vanthoor and Ramos win a chaotic qualifying race in Slovakia Ring


By Tarek Ramchani

It's was dream Saturday for Laurens Vanthoor, his team-mate Cesar Ramos and the whole Belgian Audi Club Team WRT. After taking a breathtaking pole position earlier today, the drivers of the #1 Audi R8 LMS ultra secured a great race victory in the qualifying race.

The race itself was a very chaotic one with heavy rain and a very massive crash. Right from the start Tomas Enge driving a Lamborghini Gallardo FL2 GT3 had a big crash. The driver went out OK from the very damaged car but the race was red flagged. Another red flag came out later with very hard conditions same to what WTCC competitors have faced a couple of months ago.

Rast and Ramos victory came in the very closing stages of the race. Their team-mates René Rast and Enzo Ide with the #2 Audi R8 LMS ultra were holding the race lead until five minutes to go when Ide lost control of his car and ended the race in ninth place. The #1 Audi duo won ahead of the #28 Lamborghini Gallardo FL2 GT3 in second place and the #84 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 in third.


The #4 Audi R8 LMS ultra from Belgian Audi Club Team WRT was sixth with youngsters Vincent Abril and Mateusz Lisowski.

The #5 Phoenix Racing Audi of Marc Basseng and Alessandro Latif ended in eighth place overall and took the Pro-Am class victory.

Two Audis were outside the Top 10. The #9 R8 LMS ultra from Belgian Audi Club Team WRT driven by Stéphane Ortelli and Fabian Hamprecht was twelfth. The #6 Phoenix Racing car of Niki Mayer-Melnhof and Markus Winkelhock was fifteenth.

Photo credit: Belgian Audi ClubPatrick Hecq Photography