Audi Motorsport Newsletter 18/2015

Another podium for Paul Miller Racing

The Audi cus­tomer team Paul Miller Rac­ing had a strong week­end in the TU­DOR United Sports­Car Cham­pi­onship (TUSC) by tak­ing pole po­si­tion and achiev­ing a podium re­sult at the Belle Isle Street Cir­cuit in De­troit. The dri­ving duo of Christo­pher Haase and Dion von Moltke pi­loted the #48 Audi R8 LMS to third po­si­tion in the GT Day­tona class and suc­cess­fully de­fended their lead in the class stand­ings. It was also the team’s sec­ond con­sec­u­tive podium fin­ish in the 2015 TUSC sea­son.

AB Sport Auto on the class podium in Spain

The French Audi cus­tomer team AB Sport Auto cel­e­brated a podium re­sult in the 4-hour race at Mo­tor­land Aragon, round three of the V de V En­durance Se­ries. Both of the team’s Audi R8 LMS qual­i­fied in the top three of the GTV2 class. Eric van de Vyver/​Tiziano Caru­gati/​Michel Wegelin fin­ished the en­durance race in third po­si­tion in class with the #11 Audi R8 LMS, ahead of their team-mates, Franck Thy­baud/​Thierry Proust/​Maxime Jousse in fourth.

Rahel Frey as a keynote speaker

Audi dri­ver Ra­hel Frey will make a spe­cial ap­pear­ance in Thun, Switzer­land, on June 30. At a start-up event, the 29-year-old who com­petes in the Audi R8 LMS Cup and the ADAC GT Mas­ters this sea­son will de­liver a speech on ‘team spirit.’ In­ter­ested guests can reg­is­ter for the pub­lic event by June 23 at www.innobe.ch.

Registration period for Audi Sport TT Cup 2016 has started

In four weeks from now, the sec­ond in a to­tal of six race week­ends in the 2015 Audi Sport TT Cup will be held at the Noris­ring. Now, the reg­is­tra­tion pe­riod for the com­ing sea­son has started. 165 can­di­dates from 30 na­tions had ap­plied for the in­au­gural sea­son. 18 dri­vers had been se­lected for the cur­rent sea­son in a multi-stage se­lec­tion process. The reg­is­tra­tion form for the 2016 Audi Sport TT Cup is avail­able here: www.bit.ly/TTCupApplication.

Bonanomi sparks Italian media’s enthusiasm for Audi Sport TT Cup

Audi fac­tory dri­ver Marco Bo­nanomi served as an in­struc­tor for the Cup ve­hi­cle from the Audi Sport TT Cup in a test at Fran­ci­a­corta. The WEC dri­ver fa­mil­iar­ized Ital­ian jour­nal­ists with the race car from the Audi one-make cup. The par­tic­i­pants, who were ob­vi­ously ex­cited about the 310-hp rac­ing ver­sion of the Audi TT with­out ex­cep­tion, also in­cluded the Ital­ian skier Giu­liano Raz­zoli, the Olympic slalom gold medal­ist in the 2010 Win­ter Games in Van­cou­ver.

A word from … Jamie Green

The Lausitzring double winner and leader of the DTM standings about his perfect weekend.

Following a strong final sprint in the 2014 season and a victory in the 2015 season opener you upped the ante by two further victories at the Lausitzring. You seem to have finally arrived in the Audi family in your third year?

I’ve been feel­ing com­fort­able with the four rings for a long time, but now I’m in my sec­ond year of dri­ving for Team Ros­berg and by now I per­fectly know the way it works, as well as my me­chan­ics and en­gi­neers. In our in­ter­ac­tion with Audi Sport, this helps to ex­tract the op­ti­mum from the Audi RS 5 DTM and to per­fectly set it up for my needs. All these are im­por­tant el­e­ments of our cur­rent suc­cess.

Is the fitness program you intensified last winter another success factor?

I be­came not only phys­i­cally fit­ter but also men­tally stronger last win­ter. In ad­di­tion, we spent a lot of time with the car in or­der to bet­ter un­der­stand it. So, one thing leads to an­other and sud­denly you’re surf­ing the wave of suc­cess.

… directly headed for the Championship?

Last sea­son, af­ter three vic­to­ries in four races, I might have an­swered that with a slightly hes­i­tant ‘yes.’ But now, af­ter four races, we’re not even close to the sea­son’s mid-point, but still at the be­gin­ning of the year. 14 races are still open. That’s a very long road on which a lot can still hap­pen. I’m not ey­ing the cham­pi­on’s tro­phy yet, but fo­cus on the next re­spec­tive race.

And in four weeks from now that will be the favorite race of the ‘King of the Norisring’…

Like prac­ti­cally any­one in the DTM I’m look­ing for­ward to the sea­son’s pin­na­cle event which is Au­di’s home round as well. How­ever, fol­low­ing the tri­umphs in re­cent weeks, we’re trav­el­ing there with a lot of suc­cess weight on board of our Audi cars. But that won’t keep us from giv­ing every­thing to clinch an­other suc­cess.

Coming up next week

06–07/​06 Red Bull Ring (A), rounds 3 and 4, ADAC GT Mas­ters
06–07/​06 Sil­ver­stone (GB), rounds 5 and 6, GT Open
06–07/​06 Spa (B), rounds 5 and 6, French GT Cham­pi­onship
07/​06 Zolder (B), round 3, Blanc­pain Sprint Se­ries