First win of season for Abt Audi duo Van der Linde and Wackerbauer

• Audi in tight finish with Bentley at the Sachsenring
• Porsche man Bachler closes gap on championship leaders
• Dominic Jöst and Florian Scholze increase lead in Gentlemen class

Hohenstein-Ernstthal: ADAC GT Masters defending champion Kelvin van der Linde (19, ZAF) has come to the end of a long lean spell. In temperatures of around 35 degrees at the Sachsenring, the South African and his C.Abt Racing team-mate Stefan Wackerbauer (19, DEU) steered their Audi R8 to a first win of the season. The Audi duo eventually prevailed in a thrilling finish against the Bentley Team HTP pairing of Clemens Schmid (25, AUT) and Fabian Hamprecht (20, DEU), who took their maiden podium finish, by 0.6 seconds. “I have no words,” said a delighted van der Linde, who also won at Sachsenring in 2014. “Sachsenring is my favourite track; things could not have gone more perfectly than they did today.” Meanwhile, Klaus Bachler (24, AUT) and Martin Ragginger (27, AUT) in the GW IT Racing Team Schütz Motorsport Porsche 911 opened up the title chase once again. Third place in the race was enough to restore Bachler’s second place in the standings and reduce the deficit on championship leaders Sebastian Asch (29, DEU) and Luca Ludwig (26, DEU) to 23 points with four races to go in the 2015 season. Asch and Ludwig had to park up their Team Zakspeed Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG today due to a steering defect.

Quick pit stop gives Audi the lead

Perfect work by the pit crew and an optimum strategy secured the Audi outfit owned and managed by Christian Abt their first win of the season. At the start, van der Linde held on in third place behind the Porsche driven by Bachler and the Bentley of Hamprecht. Slick pit stop strategy then brought the Audi out in the lead. Van der Linde stopped later than his opponents for the mandatory change of drivers, the red R8 also spent less time in the box.

Consequently, Wackerbauer emerged from the pit lane just ahead of Schmid in the Bentley and Ragginger in the Porsche. The Bentley driver then put the leading Audi under continuous pressure throughout the second stint but eventually had to concede defeat by a narrow 0.6 second margin. “This victory was above all a great team effort,” added van der Linde. “We’ve not had much luck so far this year, but we’ve finally made the breakthrough here. At last, we’ve notched up a race win. Hopefully, we can continue in the same vein at Zandvoort in three weeks’ time.”

“It’s incredible,” said Wackerbauer after recording his maiden win in the series. “We’ve finally done it. The key to victory was the late pit stop after perfect preliminary work by Kelvin. We were able to overtake the competition and take the lead. Finally, all the hard work by our team in recent months has paid off.”

The battle for third place was equally hard fought. Ragginger had to defend himself against attacks by Luca Stolz (20, DEU) in a Bentley Continental before bringing the 911 home in third place. Stolz and Bentley Team HTP co-driver Maximilian Buhk (22, DEU) had to settle for fourth. Bachler took seven points out of the championship leaders at the Sachsenring: “I am now in striking distance of the leaders and will continue to give it everything I’ve got. The season isn’t over until the last race at Hockenheim.”

Hari Proczyk (39, AUT) and Andreas Simonsen (25, SWE) in the HP Racing Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG crossed the line in fifth place ahead of Florian Stoll (34, DEU) and Marc Basseng (36, DEU) in their kfzteile24 MS RACING Audi R8. Local favourite Philip Geipel (28, DEU) from nearby Plauen and Rahel Frey (29, CH) in the YACO Racing Audi R8 took seventh ahead of Saturday’s race winners Dominik Baumann (22, AUT) and Jens Klingmann (25, DEU). The BMW Sports Trophy Team Schubert pairing had to work their way up the field from 13th to eighth after encountering difficulties in qualifying. Baumann and Klingmann now find themselves back in third position, 31 points behind the championship leaders. Jordan Lee Pepper (19, ZA) and Nicki Thiim (26, DK) of C.Abt Racing finished the race in ninth place ahead of the Callaway Competition Corvette driven by Andreas Wirth (30, DEU) and Daniel Keilwitz (26, DEU).

Nissan make it two wins out of two in the Gentlemen trophy

Florian Scholze (42, DEU) and Dominic Jöst (36, DEU) sharing the cockpit of an MRS GT Racing Nissan GT-R came away from the weekend with maximum points in the Gentlemen class. In the absence of title rival Remo Lips, the Nissan duo triumphed on Sunday ahead of MRS GT-Racing team-mate Marc Gassner (24, DEU) and at the same time further increased their lead in the competition for amateur drivers.

Result: Race 2

1. Stefan Wackerbauer / Kelvin van der Linde (C.Abt Racing, Audi R8 LMS ultra), 41 laps
2. Clemens Schmid / Fabian Hamprecht (Bentley Team HTP, Bentley Continental GT3), +0.676 sec
3. Martin Ragginger / Klaus Bachler (GW IT Racing Team Schütz Motorsport, Porsche 911 GT3 R), +12.062 sec
4. Luca Stolz / Maximilian Buhk, (Bentley Team HTP, Bentley Continental GT3), +12.414 sec
5. Hari Proczyk / Andreas Simonsen (HP Racing, Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3), +13.137 sec
6. Florian Stoll / Marc Basseng (kfzteile24 MS RACING, Audi R8 LMS ultra), +13.781 sec