Continental Tires Sports Car Challenge – Rolex 24 Hours

We’re always jazzed for the first race of the season, and this year was certainly no exception. If anything, there was more hubbub than ever for this race, because there was SO much to talk about.

Even though it was not the “main event” of the weekend, this was a hugely important race for Audi Sport Customer Racing, as they had 12 cars in 2 classes. First we have the GS class, featuring 4 of the the all new R8 LMS GT4 Customer Racing cars. Second but no less exciting than the R8 is the TCR (Touring Car)  being the also almost all new RS 3 LMS.

These are a big deal to Audi customers, as they bring Audi levels of attention to detail, engineering and race support along with the deal. The cars are purpose built, highly engineered racing cars. At no point were any of these cars road cars. They do have air conditioning though. Everything we saw about these cars told us that they are the creme de la creme of race cars that a privateer or small team might want to have.

We had the chance to meet with the teams ahead of the race, and everyone we talked with was very positive and excited about their new cars. Even though none of them had a vast amount of time in the cars, they were all turning very good lap times indicative of the car’s true abilities.

The teams running Audi cars were:

In GS running the Audi R8 LMS GT4:

Up next is the Audi RS 3 LMS in the TCR class:

The on track action in the 4 hours long was exciting to say the least, as while the early laps were clean, much of the race was somewhat “full contact”, and unfortunately most of the R8 LMS entries suffered some kind of loss as a result. Some were little bumps and some were crushing hits. The TCR entries fared a little better, though one of the most dramatic moments was the RS Werkes car being stuffed NASCAR style into the wall at turn 12 (NASCAR turn 4) by a Mustang.

The final results were somewhat mixed from the Audi perspective. On one hand, there was great joy in watching how well the RS 3 TCR cars ran, though the only question really was which Audi would win. Regardless, everyone on hand was extremely impressed with the cars in general, especially the teams running them.

For the GS teams though, it was a disappointing day. Each of the 4 teams picked up as much bad luck as they could. It was a shame really, as each had the pace on track to be top 5. Ultimately, the top finishing Audi was the #DriveProgress team of Ashley Freiberg and Gosia Rdest, who finished in 12th.

One thing is for sure though, with further time in the cars, we are certain that the R8 LMS GT4 teams are going to find great success in future races.