24 hours of Spa: Audi R8 LMS victorious
Posted 31st July, 2011 in Audi, Motorsport | Leave a comment
Audi’s R8 LMS dominated a strong field of competition at the 63rd running of the 24 hours of Spa in Belgium this weekend, leading the race, amazingly, for 22 hours. Piloted by endurance racer Greg Franchi, and Audi’s DTM regulars – Mattias Ekström and Timo Scheider – the #33 R8 from the factory-supported Team WRT inherited the lead from Team Phoenix after driver Christopher Haase slid off the track in car #99, leading to the car’s retirement.
Impressively, the victorious R8 ended the marathon race two-laps ahead of the Team Schubert BMW Z4 GT3 driven by Dirk Werner, Claudia Hurtgen and Edward Sandstrom. Third place was secured by the Black Falcon Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 of Thomas Jager, Stephane Lemeret and Kenneth Heyer.
“Wow, what a race! To start I thought that I was in the DTM because everybody was driving so wildly. Then there were several incidents involving the competition and sister cars, but we kept out of trouble and just concentrated on fast, clean a faultless driving,” said Mattias Ekström.
[Source: Audi Motorsport]
