Audi Declares Factory-Assisted Entries for 24H Spa

Audi Sport has confirmed that it will provide extended factory support to five cars from four teams at the TotalEnergies 24 Hours of Spa later this month.

Team WRT, Sainteloc Junior Team, Tresor by Car Collection and Attempto Racing are due to run under the ‘Audi Sport Team’ banner for the third round of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup season, which also counts as a round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli.

There was initially some doubt regarding whether Audi Sport would be providing its usual level of extended support to customer teams for Spa, after all of its full-season Pro entries were shown without the Audi Sport Team moniker on the official entry list.

There has only been one deviation from the full-time GTWC Europe Endurance Cup driving squads, with Ricardo Feller joining the No. 66 Audi Sport Team Attempto crew alongside Dennis Marschall and Markus Winkelhock.

Feller, who became an Audi Sport factory driver this year, replaces Juuso Puhakka who becomes the fourth driver in Attempto Racing’s privateer No. 99 Silver Cup entry.

The Audi Sport Team label will apply to both of WRT’s Pro category entries including the No. 46 car driven by Valentino Rossi, Nico Mueller and Frederic Vervisch.

Last year’s Spa runners-up Kelvin van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts form the No. 32 Audi Sport Team WRT lineup, as is the case in Endurance Cup.

Audi Sport Team Tresor’s No. 12 car will be driven by Mattia Drudi, Luca Ghiotto and Christopher Haase.

Factory drivers Patric Niederhauser and Christopher Mies will team up with their Silver-rated Endurance Cup co-driver Lucas Legeret for Audi Sport Team Sainteloc.

A dozen Audis will tackle the 24 Hours of Spa in total, with the five factory-assisted cars joined by seven privateer R8s from Attempto, Sainteloc, Tresor by Car Collection, Boutsen Racing and Team WRT which has three cars in the classes outside Pro.

Alberto di Folco, Daniele di Amato and GTWC Europe Sprint Cup Silver class champion Pierre-Alexandre Jean will join Lorenzo Patrese in the No. 12 Car Collection Audi.

It marks a change since the start of the Endurance Cup season when Patrese, the 16-year-old son of Grand Prix winner Riccardo Patrese, raced with Axel Blom and Hugo Valente.

Audi Sport factory driver Gilles Magnus, meanwhile, is the fourth driver in the No. 26 Sainteloc Audi that will race in Silver Cup.

FIA WTCR competitor Magnus already drives the No. 26 car in the Sprint series.

Team WRT has signed Jean’s fellow Sprint Cup class champion Ulysse de Pauw to drive its No. 33 Gold Cup car alongside the previously-confirmed Ryuichiro Tomita, Arnold Robin and Maxime Robin.

The other privateer Audi lineups were previously shown on the 65-car entry list.

“Our endurance racing season has been excellent with two 24-hour race wins so far,” said Chris Reinke, Head of Audi Sport customer racing.

“The performances of the customer team WRT in Dubai in January and Audi Sport Team Phoenix at the Nürburgring in June are already outstanding at the year’s halfway point.

“Now, we want to continue our success story at Spa, where we achieved overall victories in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2017.”