Team Car Collection Motorsport experienced a difficult weekend at the second event of the year of the ADAC GT Masters at the Red Bull Ring. After a good start with top times in the free practice sessions, not much went right afterwards. While both cars failed to finish on Saturday, the #69 with Florian Spengler and Markus Winkelhock provided a highlight on Sunday with 11th place, while the #33 with Thierry Vermeulen and Mattia Drudi again suffered a retirement.
In the free practice sessions, things were still going well for the two Audi R8 LMS evo II GT3 cars fielded by Car Collection. Both cars were at the top end of the timesheets so that the team was optimistic going into qualifying on Saturday. Here, the two drivers Thierry Vermeulen (#33) and Florian Spengler (#69) failed to find a clear lap on the short circuit so that they only finished 17th (#69) and 19th (#33) on the grid despite a relatively small gap.
Starting in the rear, the two cars were involved in fierce battles. Markus Winkelhock was nevertheless already on his way to a better position after the driver change when he was hit by a competitor and had to park the car damaged. The sister car also had several collisions and received a drive-through penalty on top of that, which is why the team subsequently took the Audi out of the race.
On Sunday, when the two Audi Sport drivers Mattia Drudi (#33) and Markus Winkelhock (#69) contested qualifying, things did not go smoothly either. Drudi got stuck in traffic several times at the peak of his tire performance and in the end finished in 17th place despite being only 0.36 seconds behind. Markus Winkelhock in the #69 managed a good lap with a gap of only 0.33 seconds, but this was still only enough for 13th place on the grid due to the extremely tight field.
In the race, Winkelhock and Florian Spengler, who later took over from the former F1 driver, were able to stay out of all the fights and achieve a good result with 11th place. The #33 was again unlucky and suffered a puncture 15 minutes before the end of the race, after which they had to park the car.
The potential for top results was definitely there this weekend, as the great performances in free practice showed. However, everything simply has to fit perfectly at the Red Bull Ring in order to move up in the extremely tight field.
Foto Credits: Michael Ehrensperger, Roland Hasenmüller