Montaplast By Land Audi Wins On Saturday

Saturday’s ADAC GT Masters race at the Lausitzring, this round replacing the planned Zandvoort weekend, provided excitement right up to the last second. In the end, Montaplast by Land Motorsport Audi drivers Max Hofer and Christopher Haase were just 0.147 seconds ahead of the Mann-Filter-Team HTP-Winward Mercedes-AMG duo Indy Dontje and Maximilian Götz With Robert Renauer, joined this weekend by Klaus Bachler, coming home third.

Rutronik Audi drivers and defending champions Patric Niederhauser and Kelvin van der Linde continue to lead the overall standings. “I’m very satisfied. Our team gave us a really great car,” said winner Christopher Haase at the finish. “It’s great to have won in the ADAC GT Masters again. Only those who have the best package will win here. And we had that today.”

The first half of the wet race was dominated by pole-setter Robert Renauer. The Porsche driver stayed in front at the start, followed by Mercedes-AMG driver Indy Dontje, who also started from the front row. The top duo then moved slightly away from the field until the safety car was deployed for three laps on lap eight to recover Hendrik von Danwitz’s Audi R8 LMS. Renauer and Dontje stayed in front until the pit stop window. Both made the driver changes to Klaus Bachler and Maximilian Götz early on.

Max Hofer and Christopher Haase and the Porsche drivers Alfred Renauer and Sebastian Asch both gambled on a late pit stop, on a late pit stop. This tactic paid off. Haase and Asch took the lead after the pit stop window, closely followed by Bachler and Götz. The Porsche drivers and Götz then fought an exciting three-way battle for second place behind front runner Haase. Götz managing to get past Bachler first and then also ex-champion Asch.

After a late safety car phase, which ensured a three-lap sprint across the finish line, Götz Haase put under pressure again but found no way around it. Hofer and Haase took their first win of the season, for Hofer it was second overall in the ADAC GT Masters, partner Haase took his twelfth overall.

Dontje and Götz narrowly missed out on the win, but were able to celebrate their first podium of the season in second. Alfred Renauer and Sebastian Asch saw the checkered flag as third but were subsequently given a 30-second penalty for an offence under yellow flags, which threw the duo out of the top 10.

Third place instead went to their team mates Robert Renauer and Klaus Bachler. As the best-placed driver among the title candidates, Renauer has reduced his points gap to the top of the table to 15 points.

Küs Team75 Bernhard pairing David Jahn and Jannes Fittje finished fourth ahead of title defenders Patric Niederhauser and Kelvin van der Linde.

Directly behind in sixth were Championship contenders Christian Engelhart and Michael Ammermüller, now just two points behind, in the team standings their SSR Performance team is now two points ahead of Rutronik Racing with three races to go.

Rutronik racing Audi duo Hamza Owega and Dennis Marschall finished seventh, ahead of Callaway Competition Corvette drivers Markus Pommer and Jeffrey Schmidt.

Ricardo Feller and Stefan Mücke from BWT Mücke Motorsport and Constantin Schöll/ Jordan Pepper in the T3-HRT Motorsport Bentley complete the Top 10.

Elia Erhart (EFP Car Collection by Tece) took his third win of the season in the Pirelli Trophy classification. The Audi driver thus has won the title in the classification for non-professional drivers.

Christopher Haase (Montaplast by Land Motorsport, Audi R8 LMS): “Our race was good overall. Max laid the foundation stone with a good performance in the first half-hour and our strategy was exactly right, especially with regard to the safety car phase to the race

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