September 4, 2011
Source: Audi Motorsport
· New commission has stewardship of World Sportscar Championship
· Triathlon with McNish/Kristensen/Bonanomi
· Audi R8 LMS wins another 24-hour race
Ingolstadt, – The agenda for the new 2012 World Sportscar Championship is being set early on. A high-caliber steering commission has been formed and Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich is one of the members.
New commission: The FIA has formed a twelve-member commission which is responsible for the management and development of the 2012 World Sportscar Championship. Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich represents the interests of the manufacturers in this circle. In addition, the commission is made up of four representatives each of the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO), one team representative and one representative of the sponsors.
Le Mans schedule has been set: The Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) has announced the schedule for the 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours. The 80th Le Mans 24 Hours will be held on June 16 and 17. Two weeks before, on June 3, the teams will have the opportunity to prepare for the event on the test day. Audi is aiming for its eleventh overall victory at the endurance classic next year.
High-powered trio: The two Audi sports car drivers Allan McNish and Tom Kristensen and Audi test driver Marco Bonanomi contested a triathlon together on Sunday. Billed as “Team McKristonomi” the racers at the Tristar111 Monaco Triathlon covered a one-kilometer swimming distance, 100-kilometer bicycle distance and a ten-kilometer run. In the end the Audi trio achieved 203rd place in the field of more than 1000 entrants.
Electrified: Benoît Tréluyer and Romain Dumas will contest the Masters Kart of Paris Bercy on December 10 und 11. Powered by purely electric energy the two Audi Le Mans winners will be pitted against Rally World Champion Sébastien Loeb and many other renowned drivers at the kart race organized by ex-Formula 1 driver Philippe Streiff.
Reward for Phoenix squad: At the next-to-last DTM race at the Nürburgring Audi Sport Team Phoenix performed the quickest pit stop of the race. The service on the Schaeffler Audi A4 DTM driven by Martin Tomczyk including the drive into and out of the pits took only 22.916 seconds. The exclusive DTM tire partner Hankook treated the speedy mechanics to free beer for this feat at Brands Hatch on Friday.
Five weeks after the victory at the Spa 24 Hours the Belgian WRT team also won the Zolder 24 Hours with an Audi R8 LMS. At the fourth round of the Belcar series the drivers, François Verbist/Enzo Ide/Xavier Maassen/Bert Longin, had achieved an 18-lap lead over their immediate rivals after 818 laps.
Success in Australia. At the fifth round of the Australian GT Championship Mark Eddy in the Audi R8 LMS of the Penfold Audi Sport team celebrated victory at the first race. The Australian had started from the pole position. He finished the second race as the runner-up.
Podium in France: At the sixth race weekend of the French GT Championship Nicolas Tardif and Grégory Guilvert in the Audi R8 LMS of the Saintéloc team took second place at Saturday’s race in front of their brand colleagues David Hallyday/Stéphane Ortelli from the Audi France team.
A brief interview with … Martin Tomczyk
While the grid was forming for the DTM race at Brands Hatch it started to rain. Were you happy or unhappy about that?
Actually, I didn’t care. I know that my Audi is good on a wet track and that it’s good on a dry track. So it really didn’t matter to me. Obviously it did to many others though … For the set-up we banked on experience-based parameters. My thanks go to the team. It had the right experience-based parameters and was able to implement them. My car was really fast today.
How difficult was achieving this victory for you?
It was definitely difficult to drive at the limit because the track conditions kept changing. There’d be a lot of rain and then the track would dry off again. That was the case throughout the race. I had three sets of tires. All of them were a bit different. That’s why you had to go to the limit to stay in front and be able to set your times.
You arrived at Brands Hatch as the hunter, at Oschersleben you will be the hunted. Which role is the more pleasant one?
I definitely prefer traveling to a race as the hunted. If you can convert a seven-point disadvantage into a one-point advantage on a single weekend, that’s perfect. That can’t be topped after such a long summer break. Now we’ve got three more races coming up, will put the pedal to the metal and see where we’ll stand then!
Coming up next week
Sep 11 Silverstone (GB), ILMC, round 05
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