Audi has claimed victory at the prestigious 24 Hours of Spa with the factory team of Markus Winkelhock, Christopher Haase and Jules Gounon in an R8 LMS.
The German squad finished 11 seconds ahead of the M-Sport Bentley Continental to claim a fourth GT3 win at the endurance race and finished with double points at the conclusion of the Endurance Cup during this year’s Blancpain GT Series.
As with many GT3 races, the 24 Hours of Spa played host to some tight on-track action with the Auto Sport Promotion Mercedes-AMG GT3 leading most of the first half. However, the AMG had to be held at its final pitstop to ensure the driver didn’t exceed their 65-minute maximum stint. This dropped the Mercedes behind the Bentley. It eventually finished third.
Fourth position was claimed by the Porsche 911 GT3 R of Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen, 1 minute and 7 seconds behind the winning Audi, an impressive result considering the team suffered a three-minute stop-go penalty early in the race.
On the back of the successful showing, head of Audi Sport customer racing Chris Reinke said “Sincere congratulations to the victorious drivers and the team on this outstanding performance. This was a particularly tough edition of the 24 Hours of Spa because, due to a very good balance of performance, the Stéphane Ratel organization and Claude Surmont managed to create a field that has been as level as hardly ever before. This was hard work for all the teams because no-one dominated this race. What we saw this weekend was perfect advertising for GT3 racing.”
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