Belgian Audi Club Team WRT triumphed on all fronts at the FIA GT-season-ending Baku City Challenge.
Team WRT drivers Stéphane Oretlli and Laurens Vanthoor captured the team title in the qualifying race and then took the driving championship in the feature race at Baku on Sunday, while the team won a €100,000 bonus for winning the main event.
Vanthoor and Ortelli in their #11 WRT Audi R8 LMS finished second in the qualifying race behind teammates Niki Mayr-Melnhof and René Rast in the #12 car, earning enough points to seal the team title. Vanthoor and Ortelli came back a few hours later to win the main race with a combination of clever pit strategy, good luck, and good pace.
The title was the first in GT for 22-year-old Vanthoor, who joined the team in 2012 (he also won an F3 series in 2009,) and one more Ortelli, 43, who has won the Blancpain Endurance series, LMS GT1 series, FIA GT NGT-class titles twice, Porsche Supercup once, and has an overall win at Le Mans as well.
The veteran Ortelli was gracious enough to give credit to his younger co-driver, who was at the wheel for the second half of the main race.
“First of all I think that I could have not done it without Laurens’ speed and talent,” Ortelli said on the fiagtseries.com online broadcast. “I think that at his age I was far from being so good, so I really want to say thank you to him.
“I would also like to congratulate Belgian Audi Club Team WRT. I am just speechless, it is so nice to win the championship with WRT and Audi, and especially a race win at the end. I still cannot believe that we won that race. I am very happy.”
Vanthoor’s relative lack of experience made the weekend tough for him, he explained after the race, and he was glad to have his veteran co-driver to provide some guidance.
“Taking the checkered flag and win both the race and the championship was a great emotion,” Vanthoor said. “I’m glad it’s over because I was probably more stressed than I could have imagined for this final round.
“Stéphane helped me tremendously not to think too much, but still—this last race was crazy. I did not understand everything that was happening and I was just trying not to make a mistake.”
Back to Baku and Better Than Ever
The second Baku City Challenge in Baku, Azerbaijan on Sunday, Nov. 24, was the perfect finale to the 2013 FIA GT Series.
The 2012 Baku City Challenge was conceived as a festival of arts and music along with an international GT race, designed to bring tourists to the Azerbaijani capital.
The appeal of world-class GT drivers and some of the most exotic racing machinery on the planet—GT3 McLarens, Mercedes AMGs, Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, BMWs, and Audis—attracted some 42,000 fans and media attention from all over the world.
The first event was so successful it was expanded and included in the 2013 FIA GT Series calendar.
The first Baku City Challenge raced over a 14-corner course only 2.15 kilometers long. The 2013 version was held on a new four-kilometer, 16-turn track which blasted past the harbor and wound through the streets of old Baku. The new course offered elevation changes, a couple of tight hairpins, and some high-speed turns in the middle, making it much more challenging for drivers and more exciting for fans.
As with all FIA GT events, the racing took place over two days, with practice and qualifying on Saturday and a qualifying and main race on Sunday. Qualifying sets the grid for the qualifying race, which is worth eight championship points. The qualifying race results determine the main race grid; the main race is worth 25 championship points.
WRT Sweeps Qualifying Race
The qualifying race had to be postponed one hour because of ice on the course. Baku sits on the freshwater Caspian Sea, and condensation had frozen on the roads overnight. The race course was ready by 10:45 a.m. local time but the race still started with three laps under yellow to let drivers have extra time to heat up their brakes and tires in the cold air.
WRT started 1–2 and stayed that way through the first 15 laps, with René Rast in the #12 Audi leading Laurens Vanthoor in the #11. Rast and the rest fo the top four, save Vanthoor, pitted on lap 16 at the 31-minute mark of the one-hour race. Rast’s co-driver Niki Mayr Melnhof, rejoined in second place behind Andreas Simonsen in the #2 HTP Gravity Charouz Mercedes SLS. Simonsen pitted on the next lap, handing the lead to Michael Ammermüller in the Novadriver Audi.
Ammermüller pitted on lap 17; just after he ducked in Hari Proczyk wrecked the #25 Grasser Racing Lamborghini, bringing out a safety car. This gave the lead back to Mayr Melnhof and dropped Ammermüller’s co-driver, Cesar Campanico, to 14th.
The race restarted on lap 21, but only stayed green for two laps. On lap 23, Cesar Campanico wrecked his Novadriver Audi R8 at Turn 5, bringing out a red flag.
After the wreck was cleared, the field did one lap under yellow and then took the green for a twelve-and-a-half-minute shootout.
The racing was ridiculously close for the next several laps. As Stéphane Ortelli chased his teammate Mayr Melnhof, Rob Bell in the #27 Hexis Racing McLaren MP4-12C shadowed Ortelli. Alexander Sims in the #15 Boutsen Ginion McLaren chased all three, and right on his wing came Nick Catsburg in the #4 Marc VDS BMW. The top five cars were within 3.7 seconds of each other, weaving through the narrow city streets, looking for any advantage.
The cars and drivers were evenly matched, and no one made a mistake. Niki Mayr Melnhof held on to win by 1.2 seconds over Stéphane Ortelli, giving WRT 154 points to Loeb Racing’s 119, an insurmountable lead in the team championship.
Strategy, Speed, and Luck Give WRT the Driver Title
WRT owned the front row of the starting grid for the feature race, but didn’t own it for long.
The WRT pair were lucky to be leading: shortly after they threaded their way through the first two turns, the rest of the field tried to fit four-wide into the narrow entry. Allam Khodair in the #0 BMW Sports Trophy Team Brasil Z4 tapped Sergei Afanasiev’s #2 HTP Gravity Charouz Mercedes SLS AMG GT3, creating a spinning roadblock which forced the rest of the field to take immediate evasive action.
Rob Bell in the #27 Hexis McLaren collided with another car, puncturing a tire, and had to dive into the pits, which would normally be a death sentence in a one-hour race.
Later in the lap confusion at the next chicane caused three cars to cut the chicane: Markus Winkelhock in the #5 Phoenix racing Audi, Nick Tandy in the #30 Trackspeed Porsche, and Alexander Sims in the #15 Boutsen Ginion McLaren, all moved the front of the field but wre later handed drive-through penalties for gaining advantage by going off-course.
Stéphane Ortelli passed Niki Mayr Melnhof on the first lap; Mayr Melnhov got caught up in melee and dropped to 18th Otrelli then fell prey to Frederic Vervisch in the #16 Boutsen Ginion McLaren on lap two, when Ortelli got held up by traffic.
On lap three Mayr Melnhof tried to force past Andreas Zuber in the #10 Loeb racing McLaren through the Turn 14-15 chicane, an impossible place to pass. Mayr Melhnov slid into Zuber, sending the McLaren into the wall. This collision ripped up part of the curbing, forcing a caution periods which lasted 19 minutes.
When the race restarted on lap 12, Ortelli was third behind Vervisch and Winkelhock, with Sims and Tandy right behind him. Ortelli immediately dived for the pits, which should have been open (the pit window for the mandatory driver change starts 25 minutes into the race as a rule.)
There was some confusion as to whether the pits were officially open, and whether Ortelli might be penalized; once that was cleared up, the wisdom of the choice became clear: Laurens Vanthoor in the #11 WRT Audi rejoined in 11th, but everyone ahead of him still had to pit, and since the field was tight after the yellow, no one had enough of a lead to pit and rejoin at the front.
As Sims, Winkelhock and Tandy served their penalties and the rest of the field cycled through the pits, Vanthoor advanced to second, 14 seconds behind Alon Day in the #1 HTP Gravity Charouz Mercedes. Vanthoor had another 12 seconds on the very tight bunch of third through eighth; four seconds covered this bunch.
Here luck played its part. Alon Day’s McLaren developed an electrical problem—some sensor set of some alarm which caused the engine to start cutting out. Vanthoor gained eight seconds on lap 19 alone, and by lap 23 was less than three seconds behind.
Day pulled over to let Vanthoor by on lap 25, and right after he did, the electrical problem solved itself and day started lapping at full speed, but Vanthoor was already pulling away.
On the next lap Vanthoor’s teammate René Rast, a lap down after co-driver Mayr Melnhof’s early accident, pulled in behind Vanthoor, creating a barrier to the opposition. Rast was about as quick as Vanthoor, so he didn’t hold up traffic, and wouldn’t be easy to pass if the competition caught up.
Rast’s services were not needed. The battle for second place between Day, Alvaro Parente in the #9 Loeb McLaren, and Kevin Etsre in the #27 Hexis McLaren overheated three laps from the finish, as Parente squeezed past Day and Estre tried to follow.
Day tried to move back to the racing line after Parente passed, and apparently never saw Estre diving through the same gap Parente had used. Day bounced off Estre and into Parente; Estre passed both, and Day moved into third.
The time lost as these three sorted themselves out gave Vanthoor a 1.3 second margin at the finish line on lap 30, earning the FIA GT Series driver’s title for himself and Ortelli.
Race stewards reviewed the lap 27 contact between Parente, Day, and Estre, and Estre and day were each given ten-second penalties, which moved Parente into second and Estre to third.
Despite the penalty, Kevin Estre and co-driver Rob Bell deserve high praise for their effort. Forced to pit before the end of the first lap, the pair came back to finish second, and then third, fighting through the entire field.
“To be honest, during my stint I did not really know in which position I was,” Estre tiold fiafgtseries.com. “I saw that I had some fast cars in front of me so I thought that I might have been in a good position.
Alon (Day) was on the way in to Turn 3, and then Alvaro (Parente) made a move on the inside, which I expected, so I went close to his bumper. Alvaro passed, and Alon was in the middle, I was on the inside next to his car but we touched a little bit. I was a bit concerned about the car because it was a huge hit but it was just in the middle (of the car).
“It really is a fantastic result for the team, especially after the incident at the start, so I am very happy.”
Sergey Afanasiev and Andreas Simonsen won the Pro-Am driver and team trophies for HTP Gravity Charouz, and Petr Charouz and Jan Stovicek won the Gentleman’s class driver and team trophy, also for HTP Gravity Charouz. The team also finished fourth in the pro class.
