Audi dominated last Saturday’s Spa 6-hour race with all 4 top placings. Its cars had a first to fourth winning finish where Loic Duval, Marc Gene and Romain Dumas benefited from the Audi R18 Ultra’s excellent speed over its in-house rivals, which meant that the e-tron hybrid version was denied a win on its debut. The four Audi machines did incredibly well at the second round of the World Endurance Championship. However, the intense pace of the No.3 Ultra car in the dry made Duval, Gene and Dumas get a well-deserved win over the others in their team. When the race started, the conditions were wet.
This meant that the four-wheel drive e-trons had an advantage when the hybrid power came into play over 120km/h around the drenched sweeps of Spa. Tom Kristensen was in the No.2 car initially led from the No.1 car of Andre Lotterer. On lap three, the two cars exchanged positions and Lotterer took the lead right away. The two were then followed by the traditional ultra cars of Marco Bonanomi (No.4) and Gene (No.3). The two hybrids got to the pit first and they remained on intermediates for their second stints.
Marc Gene shifted to slicks in a neat move that presented the catalyst to start a vigorous pursuit of the e-trons. It was assisted some more by a right front light problem for Kristensen’s No.2 car, prompting a regulatory nose change and delaying the car by 45s, pulling it to third. Gene was able to close the gap with Lotterer over what’s left of his stint before Duval took over. Duval then delivered an outstanding performance to get ahead of the leader Benoit Treluyer, who was in the No.1 car, mid-race as the Ultra proved its dominance.
