Land Audi Loses Lead in Hour 22

Having driven a faultless race, the No. 29 Audi Sport Team Land Audi R8 LMS was forced to give up the lead of the Nurburgring 24 Hours with electronic problems in Hour 22, gifting the advantage to the No. 9 Team WRT Audi.

Connor De Phillippi handed the No. 29 Audi over to Kelvin van der Linde on lap 148 with 90 seconds in hand over WRT’s Nico Mueller, but van der Linde could not get the car up to speed and completed a slow tour of the Grand Prix circuit before returning to the pits.

The Land mechanics removed the engine cover and completed a system reset, but the time lost relegated the car to third, 90 seconds behind WRT.

“We fought for 23 hours and now it ends like this, that is more than just a shame,” said Land’s Markus Winkelhock.

“Maybe we can still make the podium, that would be a small consolation. But when you take part in this race, you want to win.”

Rene Rast will take the No. 9 car to the finish and now leads by 18 seconds from Nicky Catsburg in the No. 98 ROWE Racing BMW M6 GT3.

Meanwhile, Augusto Farfus has consolidated fourth place in the No. 42 Schnitzer BMW over Maro Engel in the No. 1 Mercedes-AMG Team Black Falcon and Maxi Buhk in the No. 50 HTP Mercedes-AMG GT3.

The closest on-track battle heading into the final hour is for seventh between the No. 33 Falken Motorsports BMW of Peter Dumbreck and Tom Onslow-Cole’s No. 19 Schubert Motorsport BMW, with the British pair separated by just 1.3 seconds.

Sandra Michiels contributed to this report.