WRT Takes Charge in Opening Hour at Indianapolis

Team WRT took charge with its pair of BMW M4 GT3s driven by Philipp Eng and Augusto Farfus in the opening stint of the Indianapolis 8 Hour presented by AWS.

Eng surged into the lead of the Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli round from fourth in the grid, getting round two Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evos and planting his No. 30 BMW around the outside of Huber Motorsport’s pole-sitter Alfred Renauer.

The Austrian driver built an early three-second lead as Renauer focused on defending from Mercedes-AMG Team Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Maximilian Goetz and Farfus, who started sixth.

Farfus overtook Goetz on the brakes into Turn 1 after nine minutes, before moving his No. 31 BMW past Renauer’s Porsche 911 GT3 R to make it a one-two for BMW.

The Brazilian then closed the gap to Eng and the WRT cars occasionally ran nose-to-tail as the gap hovered around one second as they negotiated some traffic.

At the end of the opening hour, Farfus was three seconds clear of Goetz in the third-placed Mercedes-AMG, while Bill Auberlen ran fourth in the BimmerWorld BMW that was the best of the Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS entries.

Auberlen overtook Mercedes-AMG Team GruppeM Racing’s Luca Stolz for fifth with an impressive braking move around the outside into Turn 1, before dispatching Renauer for fourth.

Stolz continued in fifth for GruppeM, with Klaus Bachler close behind in the Fanatec GT points-leading RS1 Porsche.

The pole-sitting Huber Porsche dropped to eighth overall after one hour of racing, relinquishing the Pro-Am lead to the DXDT Racing Mercedes-AMG of Philip Ellis.

There were no full course cautions in the opening stint, although there was an incident that saw Vesko Kozarov tip Kyle Marcelli’s Racers Edge Motorsports Acura NSX GT3 Evo22 into a spin. Kozarov was given a drive-through penalty for causing the collision.