12H Bathurst 2023 – Two class wins for Audi Sport | 4Legend.com

No fewer than four Audi Sport customer teams have been on the podium at the 2023 Bathurst race. After a strong comeback, Australians Chaz Mostert, Fraser-Ross and Liam Talbot won the Pro-Am class in an Audi R8 LMS. Further back, Audi Sport drivers Christopher Mies and Riccardo Feller with Bend Motorsport Park’s Yasir Shaheen finished second. In the Silver Cup standings, Daniel Gaunt, Dylan O’Keeffe and Andrew Fossett won, with third place going to David Crampton / Trent Harrison / Glen Wood. The three Audi Sport drivers Mattia Drudi / Christopher Haas / Patrick Niederhauser lost all chance of a good overall result on lap 13 when a competitor crashed their Audi R8 LMS hard, causing it to crash into the tire barrier.

The impact of the No. 74 Audi into a tire barrier after only 33 minutes of racing, caused by an opponent, led to the retirement of pole-sitter Christopher Haas and his teammates. The damage proved too great for the race to continue. “It is even more disappointing when our Pro car retires through no fault of its own so soon after the start. After this setback, it was even sweeter to see how our customer teams excelled in their classes in this international competition. Congratulations to the four driver teams who legitimately returned from Bathurst award-bearers. »said Chris Reinke, Audi Sport head of customer racing.

The best result was achieved by the No. 65 Audi R8 LMS of the Melbourne Performance Center despite repeated loss of time. Chaz Mostert, Fraser Ross and Liam Talbot won the Pro-Am tournament and finished seventh overall. Mostert’s fastest race lap was 2m 02.168sec. The team lost valuable time to a penalty and a repair, but the trio of Australian drivers never gave up and held on to second in class for a long time until fellow No. 777 Riccardo Feller/Christopher Mays/Yasser Shaheen had their brake pads changed towards the finish. As a result, they finished ninth overall and second in the Pro-Am class. Another Audi team finished fifth in the category: longtime Audi clients Marc Cini / Lee Holdsworth / Dean Fiore achieved this result for Team Hallmarc.

In the silver classification, Audi Sport customer racing was able to celebrate another class victory. Myland Team IMS from New Zealand, who won three titles in their country with the R8 LMS last year, have relied on Australian Dylan O’Keeffe and New Zealanders Daniel Gaunt and Andrew Fawcet. In the Audi R8 LMS, they beat their closest competitor, Mercedes-AMG, by a total of six times en route to winning the class. The M-Motorsport / Vantage Racing team also relied on Audi in the short term: After not running a KTM X-Bow, David Crampton / Trent Harrison / Glen Wood switched to the Audi R8 LMS from the Melbourne Performance Center on weekends. Lucrative exchange: They finished third in the silver classification and thus climbed to the podium at the first attempt.

Team Supabarn, winners in the Am class last year at Bathurst, had no chance this year after colliding with an opponent. James Condoris, Theo Condoris, David Russell and Jonathan Webb finished 4th in the Silver Cup class after repairs. James Goulding, Brad Schumacher and Audi Sport driver Frédéric Verfisch did not finish the race.

In addition to Chaz Mostert’s best lap of the race, Audi achieved another best performance at Bathurst. Two-time Bathurst winner Christopher Mays set the first lap record for an electric model at the legendary circuit. The 33-year-old professional driver covered Mount Panorama on Saturday with a time of 2 meters 28.15 seconds in an Audi RS e-tron GT.

Pictures: Audi