ADAC GT Masters: Mixed race 1 for Audi teams at Red Bull Ring


By Tarek Ramchani

After very hard qualifying sessions yesterday at the Red Bull Ring, the Audi squad again faced a harder day in Austria today.

Race 1 was held this afternoon and proved to be difficult for the Audi R8 LMS ultra. The R16 was not able to fight for the top positions and two cars out of six ended within the top 10. The #27 entry from Prosperia C.Abt Racing finished in sixth place. The car shared by Christopher Mies and René Rast started from eighth on the grid and managed to gain two places in the end. Their teammates Christer Jöns and Markus Winkelhock were one position further back, as they ended seventh with the #28 Audi.

The remaining R8 LMS ultra cars finished in eleventh with the #100 MS Racing (Daniel Dobitsch/Aditya Patel), twelfth was the #26 Prosperia C. Abt Racing (Rahel Frey/Christopher Haase), fourteenth was the #1 MS RACING (Sebastian Asch/Florian Stoll) and twenty-first the #16 THE BOSS YACO RACING (Philip Geipel/Filip Sladecka).

Race victory went to the #2 Corvette Z06 GT3 from Callaway Competition, the #14 Ford GT from Lambda Performance was second and the #6 Porsche 997 GT3 R from Farnbacher Racing was third. The race 1 results can be seen here.

Christopher Mies and René Rast have maintained their lead in the series standings after the race today. However, they are not alone, as a total of six drivers currently have 84 points at the top of the points table.

Photo credit: ADAC GT Masters

Rolex Series: Fall-Line Motorsports announcement on the Rolex GT race at Road America


Fall-Line Motorsports Press Release
Elkhart Lake, WI (August 10, 2013)- During practice yesterday at Road America, the Fall-Line Motorsports team made the decision to focus their efforts on conducting additional testing working in conjunction with GRAND-AM and forego the GRAND-AM Rolex Series VisitFlorida.com Sports Car 250 race.

Despite the fact that the Audi R8 race car has celebrated great success around the world in GT3 racing as well as here in the U.S., as they won the Daytona 24 Hour race earlier this year, Fall-Line’s Audi R8 GRAND-AM customer racing program was launched only eight weeks ago.
“Fall-Line has only two races under their belt with the Audi R8 customer racing program with little to no time to test and develop the race car,” said Mark Boden, Fall-Line driver and principal. “The current car configuration does not allow both Fall-Line and its drivers to race at its optimum level delivering the results expected by the team, its drivers, Audi, the series and ultimately our many fans. We need to collectively look and prepare for the bigger picture and develop a package that is worthy to campaign against the other world-class marques and teams in the newly defined series in 2014.”
The decision to withdraw from Road America underscores the team’s dedication to its drivers and to further develop the customer racing program to campaign for the newly forged 2014 United SportsCar Racing Series GTD Championships.
“Fall-Line Motorsports, like Audi, is a customer driven company and therefore this is the right decision to make,” said Michael Harvey, Fall-Line’s team manager. “Obviously it’s a disappointment to have to withdraw from a race, more so since Road America is considered our home race with our headquarters a couple of hours away.
The Fall-Line Motorsports team, with the support of Audi Sport customer racing, is working with GRAND-AM and looks forward to future races.

Fall-Line Motorsports is a premiere builder and fabricator of racecars for all levels of competition. Fall-Line specializes in BMW, Porsche, Audi and other high-performance makes. Fall-Line Motorsports unveiled their Grand-Am team in 2006 and won the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge GS Championship title in 2010. In addition to fielding 3 GS BMW M3’s in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, Fall-Line also prepares and fabricates cars for other CTSCC teams, SCCA and NASA drivers, track day prepared and high performance street vehicles. www.fall-linemotorsports.com
ABOUT AUDI
Audi of America, Inc. and its U.S. dealers offer a full line of German-engineered luxury vehicles. AUDI AG is among the most successful luxury automotive brands globally. Audi was a top-performing luxury brand in Europe during 2012, and broke all-time company sales records in the U.S. Through 2016, AUDI AG will invest about $17 billion on new products, facilities and technologies.Visit www.audiusa.com or www.audiusanews.com for more information regarding Audi vehicles and business topics.

ABOUT THE B+ FOUNDATION: The Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation honors the memory of Andrew McDonough. Andrew’s mom, dad and sister founded The Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation. The overall goal of The B+ Foundation is to “Do Good”. During the racing season, Al Carter and Hugh Plumb visit kids with cancer in hospitals before racing events to make a positive difference and keep the “B+” message alive through outreach efforts and talks. The B+ Foundation provides financial assistance to families of children with cancer nationwide. In the last two years, The B+ Foundation awarded over $1,000,000 to families of children with cancer while giving over $500,000 to support research efforts. Information about the Foundation and its activities can be found at www.BePositive.org.

Photo credit: Audi of America

Spa 24 Hours: WRT Movie Documentary coming soon…


By Johan Laubscher

Belgian Audi Club Team WRT has produced many outstanding event videos in the past. Their latest work, a movie documentary featuring the 2013 Spa 24 Hours, looks excellent.

Spa was a difficult event for the Audi teams this year, as they battled hard against a BoP which was clearly not in their favour. Regardless of the BoP, the Audi teams soldiered on during the long and hard 24 Hours. By the end the #2 WRT Audi came home for third place followed by the #6 Phoenix Racing Audi in fourth.
The WRT Movie will featuring an in-depth look into the WRT team during their 2013 Spa 24 Hours. Thus far the team has said that the movie is “Coming soon…” – If the trailers are anything to go by, then this will be a must watch for Audi Motorsport and endurance racing fans. It will be available in both English and French.

The two pair of trailers from the WRT YouTube Channel have been embedded below, the English versions followed by French.


English

French

ADAC GT Masters: Difficult qualifying for Audi teams at Red Bull Ring


By Tarek Ramchani

The ADAC GT Masters is in Austria this weekend , the fifth meeting of the season hosted at the Red Bull Ring. The Audi squad is represented by the three regular teams and a total of six Audi R8 LMS ultra cars.

The qualifying sessions have already been held today, with some mixed fortunes in the Audi camp. In the first qualifying session a single R8 LMS ultra made it into the top 10. Best ranked R8 LMS ultra was the #27 Prosperia C.Abt Racing driven by Christopher Mies and René Rast in eighth place. A hard session for the remaining five Audi cars: the #100 MS Racing was thirteenth, the #28 Prosperia C. Abt Racing was fifteenth, the #1 MS Racing was eighteenth, the #26 Prosperia C. Abt Racing was twenty-first and the #16 THE BOSS YACO RACING was twenty-fifth.

The same fate and a kind of déja vu in the second qualifying session. Again a lone Audi was within the top 10, the same #27 Audi of ChristopherMies and René Rast. The ADAC GT Masters championship points leaders again qualified in the same eighth place. All the other cars were much further back, the #100 MS Racing was eighteenth, the #26 Prosperia C. Abt Racing was twenty-second, the #1 MS Racing was twenty-third, the #28 Prosperia C. Abt Racing was twenty-fourth and the #16 THE BOSS YACO RACING was twenty-fifth.

Photo credit: ADAC GT Masters

Credits: Audi MotorSport

Helio in good shape to wrap up title

Helio Castroneves looks as if he is on his way to finally win a championship after 14 years of competition in American Open Wheel Racing. Castroneves has a 34 point lead over Scott Dixon with 5 races remaining in the season.

This season, Castroneves has been the most consistent driver in the series. Despite only winning 1 race, he has finished 13 out of 14 races in the top ten and is the only driver the complete every lap of the season. His closest rival Dixon has 3 wins, but did not win until 4 races ago at Pocono and has 5 finishes of 11th or worse. Ryan Hunter-Reay, who is 3rd in points, has led more laps than anybody but has 6 finishes of 18th or worse.

So what has made Helio better this season? According to an article on RACER by Marshall Pruett, there are a number of reasons. He has settled into a good rut with John Erickson after being paired with him midway through the 2011 season. The two have proven to be very compatible with each other and results show that. He also has had some engineering changes on his team as well. Johnathan Diuguid, who was with Ryan Briscoe’s team in 2012 moved over to Castroneves’ team. Diuguid has some creative ideas that have worked in their favor as well.

The other change has been from Castroneves himself. When Will Power joined the team in 2009 and Power immediately began winning races and poles, Castroneves suddenly became the number 2 driver at Team Penske and by 2011 it appeared as if he was in despiration mode to keep up with Power. As a result of this, Castroneves made several mistakes, causing several accidents and subsequently did not win a race in a season for the first time since 1999. Being paired with Erickson helped smooth him out, he bounced back in 2012 and his results show that he has become the Helio Castroneves we see today.

Pruett’s analysis is very spot on, everything is coming together in the background for Castroneves. When you couple that with the fact that he has finished better than most of his rivals this season, you have the makings of a championship season.

With the championship going down to the wire every year since 2006, there is no telling how this championship will shake out. Will Power the last 3 years has held the crown until the last few races when poor strategy, contact on pit road or in last years case crashing out of the season finale, so racing being racing, anything can happen. A win or two would add to the cushion that Castroneves already has and if he keeps up this consistent streak, he will add his name to the Astor Challenge Cup in October.

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