Franco Girolami is champion in Italian touring car racing
Laurens de Wit wins class title in Supercar Challenge
Series of successes for the Audi R8 LMS GT4 in German club racing
The Audi Sport customer racing team Aikoa Racing won a TCR title in Italy. Successes in other classifications in Italy as well as a class title in the Netherlands complete the Audi RS 3 LMS’ tally on the last weekend in October.
Audi RS 3 LMS (TCR)
Title success in Italy: For the first time, the Audi RS 3 LMS has won the TCR Italy. Franco Girolami celebrated the win of the race series with a strong field of up to 40 entrants with his Aikoa Racing team at the finale at Imola. This was the Argentinean’s second title in a row after winning the TCR Europe with Audi last year. In the sprints at the sixth race weekend in Italy, second and third places were enough for Girolami to defeat his championship rival Niels Langeveld. Of crucial help was a sports court ruling made at Saturday’s finale but relating to the fourth event at Monza in September.
The judges cancelled a penalty imposed on Girolami that had dropped him to ninth place. As a result of the ruling, the privateer driver regained one of his total of three victories this season. Customer teams from Audi Sport customer racing have thus won their third TCR drivers title this season after the successes in Canada and in TCR Europe. In addition to the success in the overall standings, another Audi privateer driver, Vedat Ali Dalokay of Bitci Racing, prevailed in the DSG classification for race cars with dual clutch transmissions. Best driver in the Coppa ACI Sport Master was Denis Babuin, another Audi customer.
Class title in the Netherlands: Laurens de Wit won the Supersport 1 division of the 2023 Supercar Challenge. Two second places at the finale were sufficient for this, which the Dutchman achieved with compatriot and teammate Fabian Schoonhoven in the Audi RS 3 LMS of the Technova College Racing team in the two races at Assen.
Audi R8 LMS GT4
Six victories at Oschersleben: In the North German ADAC Börde Tourenwagen Cup, Audi’s customer teams with the R8 LMS GT4 were unbeatable in their class at Oschersleben. On the fifth weekend of the sprint race series, Seyffarth Motorsport with Jürgen Oehler, Finn Alexander Ellmer-Kiehn and Tobias Erdmann celebrated three individual victories in the Börde region around Magdeburg. Three further victories went to Team Georg Motorsport: Mattis Pluschkell steered the production-based GT4 sports car to success in the second sprint. In the Endurance competitions held on the same weekend, Pluschkell prevailed two more times. With four second and two third places, Seyffarth Motorsport also recorded six further podium results in the individual competitions of this club racing series.
Three podium results in France: Pierre Arraou returned from the fifth round of the French Ultimate Cup Series with three trophies. At Magny-Cours, the French privateer driver in the Audi R8 LMS GT4 scored a second, a first and again a second place in his class in the three races.
