In the battle for its fourth overall victory in the 24 Hours of Spa on July 29 and 30, Audi Sport has achieved a good starting base. Audi Sport Team WRT secured the third-best grid position in a fiercely fought competition on the 7.004-kilometer roller coaster in the Ardennes.
Frédéric Vervisch in the super pole qualifying was the best Audi driver in the GT3 racing season’s pinnacle event. The 30-year-old Belgian drove the #2 Audi R8 LMS around the Ardennes circuit in 2m 17.630s, just 24 hundredths of a second off setting the best time. The second-fastest Audi driver was René Rast in the sister car from Audi Sport Team WRT. In the battle for the best grid positions, the German achieved sixth place. Austrian Clemens Schmid in the privately entered car of Team I.S.R. took position nine. As a result, Audi is the only manufacturer to have qualified in the top ten with more than one race car. No less than eight marques managed the leap into this group which is separated by only 0.774 seconds. Kelvin van der Linde (Audi Sport Team I.S.R.) in position twelve, Jamie Green (Belgian Audi Club Team WRT) in position 18 and Christopher Haase (Audi Sport Team Saintéloc) complete Audi’s line-up on the first ten rows.
“We’re facing one of the most thrilling editions of the 24 Hours of Spa,” says Chris Reinke, Head of Audi Sport customer racing. “The gaps were already extremely small in all the practice sessions on Thursday. The performances delivered by the ten marques in the final qualifying were very balanced. So, in that respect, we’re completely happy with grid position three and the other results. The drivers and teams are well prepared for the race because we’ve completed all our programs jointly in every respect.”
Thursday’s qualifying had already showed how close the competition was with 36 cars having qualified within one second of each other. The 20 fastest of them were within just 0.464 seconds and advanced into the super pole qualifying.
On Thursday, four other Audi driver squads had qualified for the remaining grid positions. Marcel Fässler/André Lotterer/Dries Vanthoor (Audi Sport Team WRT) in position 21 missed out on the super pole qualifying by only four thousandths of a second. Nathanaël Berthon/Stéphane Richelmi/Benoît Tréluyer (Belgian Audi Club Team WRT) achieved position 37. Josh Caygill/Richard Lyons/Niki Mayr-Melnhof/Jon Venter (Belgian Audi Club Team WRT) are in 15th of the Pro-Am class and 46th overall. Fred Bouvy/Christian Kelders/Marc Rostan (Saintéloc Racing) took grid position four in the Am class and 57th in the field.
