Audi R8 LMS GT3
Turning point in Australia: The more than 2,000-kilometer journey to New Zealand’s Hampton Downs race track was well worth it. Although the Melbourne Performance Centre, a long-standing team, was 30 points behind in second place in the standings ahead of the GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS final with Broc Feeney/Brad Schumacher, giving up was not an option. Both drivers demonstrated their skills already in the qualifying sessions for both races: in the first qualifying, Audi driver Feeney beat his rival and championship leader Jaxon Evans in a Ferrari by 0.146 seconds in the battle for pole position. In the second qualifying session, Brad Schumacher in the Kelso Electrical Team MPC Audi was even 0.799 seconds faster than last year’s champion Liam Talbot in the Aston Martin – meaning that the best Audi, number 888, started both races from pole position. In the first race, Feeney and Schumacher secured their third victory of the season, with third place going to Steve Brooks/Ryan Wood in the Wolfbrook Team MPC Audi. The race got off to a chaotic start when championship leader Elliott Schutte in the Ferrari collided with Brooks and fell back, while Brad Schumacher ran wide and lost the lead to Talbot, who soon built up a ten-second lead. After the pit stops, Feeney, who had replaced Schumacher in the cockpit, was 17 seconds behind the leading Aston Martin. The 23-year-old pro driver managed a convincing comeback in the Audi. Four minutes before the end of the race, he overtook the British sports car and won by just under five seconds. This meant that Feeney/Schumacher had halved their deficit in the standings to 15 points. On Sunday, the driver duo secured their fourth victory of the season, followed by Wood/Brooks. Feeney built up a lead right after the start, before the safety car led the field for the first time after a collision. After the pit stops, Schumacher was in fourth place in the Audi, while Elliott Schutte led in the Ferrari. After another safety car phase towards the end of the race, Schumacher overtook the leading Ferrari two laps before the finish and celebrated his fourth victory of the season. However, Schutte made a mistake when he accelerated too early at the restart after the caution period. This resulted in a time penalty, which not only cost him second place in the race, but also dropped him back to seventh position. With a deficit of four points, he and Ferrari teammate Jaxon Evans eventually had to give up all hopes of winning the title after the duo had been at the top of the Pro-Am standings since the start of the season. For MPC and Audi, this was their ninth title win in the Australian sprint racing series after 2011, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023. In addition, Melbourne Performance Centre also won the Pro-Am and Am team classifications, the Am driver classification with Renee Gracie, and the Trophy class with Gary Higgon/Matthew Stoupas this year, thus winning all five classifications. The Audi R8 LMS scored another trophy in Thailand. Team B-Quik Absolute Racing ended the Thailand Super Series season on the podium. At the finale in Buriram, local driver Kiki Sak Nana and Karol Basz from Poland shared the team’s Audi R8 LMS, as they had done at the season opener at the same venue. The driver pairing finished third in Sunday’s one-hour race.