The customer teams of Audi Sport customer racing clinched three titles in the U.S.A and Asia last weekend. In addition to the Audi R8 LMS, the Audi RS3 LMS TCR race car was successful as well.
Paul Holton won the TC class title in the Audi RS3 LMS in the finale of the Pirelli World Challenge. Three days after his 21st birthday, he delivered an impeccable performance at Laguna Seca. With Team C360R he secured the top spot on the grid twice, won both races and posted the fastest lap time in each of them as well.
With that, the junior driver from Orlando, Florida, who was still racing as a rookie in the Audi Sport TT Cup in Germany last year, achieved the first title win of the Audi RS3 LMS in North America. The first-ever title win in the customer racing touring car's debut season had been celebrated three weeks earlier by Dmitry Bragin in the TCR Russia.
In Japan, Audi Team DreamDrive finished the 2017 season in the Super Taikyu series on the podium. In the Japanese club sport racing series, Shozo Tagahara, Takuya Shirasaka and Naoto Takeda in the Audi RS3 LMS on the circuit at Okayama took third place in their class. In the final classification of the series, Birth Racing Project remained the brand's best-placed customer team, coming third with an Audi RS3 LMS in the ST-TCR category.
Meanwhile, Audi's customer teams were instantly among the front runners in the inaugural Blancpain GT Series Asia season. In the Asian GT racing series, OD Racing Team, consisting of Indian Aditya Patel and Mitchell Gilbert from Malaysia won both races in the Zhejiang finale in the Audi R8 LMS. As a result, Audi remained unbeaten five times in 12 races this season.
While Patel/Gilbert ultimately missed the title in the overall classification by just one point, Marchy Lee and Shaun Thong of Team Audi Hong Kong won the series' Silver Cup classification in front of Patel and Gilbert.
Lee and Thong had travelled to China as leaders of the standings but a rival touched the Audi R8 LMS of the two campaigners from Hong Kong in the final race. The car spun and Thong dropped to 12th position. Together with Lee, who took over the car at the pit stop, he fought back to sixth place.
Elsewhere, Xu Jia, together with his teammate, Dries Vanthoor, won race one in the finale at Zhejiang. In race two, the Chinese-Belgian driver duo in the Audi R8 LMS from Kings Racing took third place. As a result, driver and Team Principal Xu Jia won his home GT championship. Victory in race two went to Kings Racing as well, with Wang Liang and Martin Rump prevaiing with a 5.7 second advantage in the final race, which meant that Kings Racing won the teams' classification as well.
Finally, two teams from Audi Sport customer racing won their class in the finale of the Spezial Tourenwagen Trophy. Andreas Schmidt in his Audi R8 LMS ultra prevailed in Class 2 in the first race at the Nurburgring. In race two, class victory went to Car Collection Motorsport with Dimitri Parhofer and Peter Schmidt in the Audi R8 LMS in front of Andreas Schmidt.
