Audi Motorsport Newsletter 17/2015

Two wins for Audi in Australia

Audi cus­tomer teams claimed both the over­all vic­tory as well as vic­tory in the Tro­phy clas­si­fi­ca­tion at the sec­ond Aus­tralian GT Cham­pi­onship race week­end. Al­most one week af­ter win­ning the 24-hour race at the Nür­bur­gring, Christo­pher Mies had yet an­other rea­son to cel­e­brate to­gether with lo­cal mata­dor Greg Crick: their Audi R8 LMS ul­tra fielded by Jamec PEM Rac­ing crossed the fin­ish line in the ‘Phillip Is­land 101’ with a one sec­ond ad­van­tage af­ter 88 laps. Smiles all round for Greg Tay­lor and Bar­ton Mawer, who won the Tro­phy clas­si­fi­ca­tion in Wall Rac­ing’s Audi R8 LMS.

Two podiums for Belgian Audi Club Team WRT

The Bel­gian Audi Club Team WRT en­joyed a suc­cess­ful week­end in the Blanc­pain En­durance Se­ries: in the sec­ond event of the sea­son at Sil­ver­stone, the dri­vers of two R8 LMS ul­tra fielded by the Bel­gian rac­ing team mounted the podium. Jean-Karl Ver­nay, Robin Fri­jns and Lau­rens Vanthoor started the 3-hour race from third place and fin­ished in sec­ond. The WRT Audi of Frank Stip­pler, Stéphane Richelmi and Stéphane Or­telli made up five places and took third on the podium. An­other Audi R8 LMS ul­tra in the hands of Filip Salaquarda, Marco Bo­nanomi and Fred­eric Vervisch (I.S.R. Rac­ing) came home in fourth place.

Audi driver Phil Burgan scores podium hat trick

Podi­ums all-round for Phil Bur­gan in the GT Cup Cham­pi­onship: the Briton fin­ished third in class in all three races at Rock­ing­ham. The third race week­end of the sea­son could not have got off to a worse start for Bur­gan. Due to elec­tronic prob­lems on his Audi R8 LMS ul­tra from United Au­tosports, he missed first qual­i­fy­ing and had to start from the back of the grid. Thanks to an im­pres­sive come­back dri­ver, he man­aged to bat­tle through the field to take third place in class and, in do­ing so, laid the foun­da­tion for two fur­ther top three re­sults.

Ekström storms onto podium in England

Mat­tias Ek­ström cel­e­brated his first podium fin­ish of the sea­son in the FIA World Ral­ly­cross Cham­pi­onship. In the fourth round of the World Cham­pi­onship at Ly­d­den Hill (Eng­land), the Swede took sec­ond place in an Audi S1 EKS RX quat­tro fielded by his pri­vate team EKS. Ek­ström was only beaten by World Cham­pion Pet­ter Sol­berg in a nail-bit­ing fi­nale. The Swede was only 0.341 sec­onds be­hind the Nor­we­gian at the check­ered flag.

Watch experts of Oris pick up speed with Audi driving experience

Audi part­ner Oris has cho­sen a mo­tor­sport re­lated venue for its first na­tional sales staff train­ing. The Swiss watch­maker in­vited 60 deal­ers to the new dri­ving ex­pe­ri­ence cen­ter in Neuburg, near the Danube river. Vice pres­i­dent of Oris, Rolf Studer, pre­sented the part­ner­ship be­tween Audi Sport and Oris, but it was not only the­ory, as the par­tic­i­pants also went out on track. To­gether with Nico Müller, the newly crowned win­ner of the 24-hour race at the Nür­bur­gring, as well as the GT dri­ver Ra­hel Frey, and the three-time Le Mans win­ner Marco Werner, the watch ex­perts col­lected prac­ti­cal dri­ving ex­pe­ri­ence on the var­i­ous tracks at the fa­cil­ity.

Timo Scheider visits Audi Shop in Berlin

Timo Schei­der ad­ver­tised for the DTM race at the Lausitzring this com­ing week­end by ap­pear­ing at the Audi Shop in the ‘Bikini Berlin’ shop­ping cen­ter. The Audi Sport Team Phoenix dri­ver busily signed au­to­graphs and re­vealed back­ground in­for­ma­tion to vis­i­tors about the DTM and his AUTO TEST Audi RS 5 DTM dur­ing a round of in­ter­views. Tick­ets for the DTM race at the Lausitzring are avail­able at www.audi-motorsport.com.

Dindo Capello is coveted guest in Italy

The triple Le Mans win­ner and cur­rent Audi dealer Dindo Capello was a pop­u­lar guest in May. Only last week he par­tic­i­pated in two events. On Thurs­day, he was in Asti to visit a trib­ute for the mo­tor­sport physi­cian Dr. Clau­dio Costa. The physi­cian has re­de­fined treat­ment stan­dards in mo­tor­bike rac­ing with his ‘Clin­ica mo­bile’. For­mer Mo­tor­bike World Cham­pion Loris Capirossi and Mo­tor­bike Grand Prix win­ner Vir­ginio Fer­rari also en­joyed the evening with Dr. Costa. In Bologna, Capello dis­played an Audi R18 TDI at an in­sur­er’s event where he met for­mer Joest dri­ver Mario Ca­soni. As for­mer pro­fes­sional rac­ing dri­ver for Audi, Capello won the Se­bring 12 Hour race with this Audi R18 TDI LMP race­car in 2012.

A word from … Nico Müller

Congratulations on winning the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring and for your new hairstyle. Who had the idea of shaving off your hair if you win?

My team-mate Christo­pher Mies came up with this mad idea. The strange thing is that he re­sisted the most in the end. But we all had to go through with it. And I can tell you one thing: I’m not re­ally happy with the re­sult on my head, but I am very pleased with our re­sult on the race track.

After your VLN win in April, it was your second victory as an Audi factory driver and certainly a special one …

Ab­solutely. The 24-hour race at the Nür­bur­gring is one of the world’s most im­por­tant mo­tor­sport events. To win here is a mile­stone. For Christo­pher, Ed­ward (Sand­ström), Lau­rens (Vanthoor) and me to win with a new car to boot, makes our suc­cess even more valu­able.

So, the win came rather unexpectedly?

I would­n’t say that. Af­ter we won at the Nord­schleife, the third race of the new Audi R8 LMS, we knew that we would start the race with a very fast, eas­ily dri­vable and re­li­able car. The dri­ver line-up was also very good, thus we tar­geted a podium fin­ish right from the start.

When did you raise your expectations from a podium to winning?

You can never be re­ally sure un­til the check­ered falls in such an ex­tremely chal­leng­ing race. Too much can hap­pen. How­ever, af­ter the first two hours, which went ex­cep­tion­ally well for us, we said we can do this. We took the lead for the first time dur­ing my dou­ble stint in the night …

… and afterwards you staged an exciting battle with your pursuers.

It was re­ally like a sprint race. In­cred­i­bly in­ten­sive. It was not just the cars be­hind that were of con­cern. The track was some­times very slip­pery. Be­cause of the rain, but more specif­i­cally be­cause of the many ail­ing cars that spread oil and other flu­ids over the track. I had a scary mo­ment in my sec­ond dou­ble stint in the morn­ing when I spun on the slip­pery track. It was a per­fect 360-de­gree pirou­ette with­out dam­age. It looked like Lady Luck was smil­ing on us.

DTM, WEC, VLN, 24-hour races – Audi drives from win to win. The atmosphere at Audi Sport could hardly be any better, don’t you think?

Ob­vi­ously, we are all de­lighted about the suc­cess, which shows that many very good de­ci­sions were taken over the last few months. How­ever, we also know that it is just a snap­shot of time. With­out doubt a very im­pres­sive one, but the tide can turn very quickly. I’m in­trigued to see how the DTM race goes at the Lausitzring. We have to race with a lot of bal­last af­ter the two wins in the sea­son opener at Hock­en­heim, BMW in con­trast can re­move bal­last and Mer­cedes is his­tor­i­cally very strong there. In ad­di­tion, the Lausitzring is a very spe­cial race track, which un­for­tu­nately I don’t know as well as many of my ri­vals. We’ll see how things pan out there. What­ever hap­pens, I’m look­ing for­ward to get­ting back into my Audi RS 5 DTM.

Coming up next week

27/​05 Mar­cel Fässler turns 39 years of age
29-30/​05 Zand­voort (NL), 24H Se­ries, round 3
29-31/​05 De­troit (USA), Pirelli World Chal­lenge, rounds 10 and 11
30/​05 De­troit (USA), Tu­dor United Sports­Car Cham­pi­onship, round 4
30-31/​05 Lausitzring (D), DTM, rounds 3 and 4
30-31/​05 Monza (I), Ital­ian GT Cham­pi­onship, rounds 3 and 4
31/​05 Aragon (E), V de V En­durance Se­ries, round 3
31/​05 Le Mans (F), test day